According to ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler and Dan Graziano, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson’s agent representation, Deiric Jackson, ‘broached’ the idea of a possible trade with team general manager Chris Ballard when the pairing met in person last week:
The Anthony Richardson situation is one I will watch closely throughout the season. Richardson’s agent, Deiric Jackson — who publicly questioned trust in the Colts to our Stephen Holder after Richardson lost the QB battle to Jones — met in person last week with Colts general manager Chris Ballard to clear the air. Jackson called the meeting “very constructive,” and just a chance for sides to “let feelings be known.” Though a trade was not requested, the topic was broached in this meeting. Ballard reinforced that Indy has no plans to trade Richardson and still believes in the quarterback.
Richardson isn’t making any waves — he will remain professional, backing up Jones and maintaining his readiness. But part of his camp’s frustration is that all parties acknowledge patience would be required when Richardson was drafted. He entered the league with one year as a full-time high school starter and one year as a starter at Florida. He has admitted publicly that his leadership and maturity were not up to par in 2024, which contributed to his in-season benching. But despite that, Richardson is 8-7 as an NFL starter, including two fourth-quarter comebacks late last season. He also worked on improving his regimen, leadership, mechanics, diet and ability to layer short-to-intermediate throws, resulting in improvement in camp that ultimately wasn’t enough to win the job. But the Colts know Richardson has a chance to play this season. This situation feels far from settled — and raises questions about how franchises fail young quarterbacks along the way.
It’s worth noting that as the ESPN dynamic reporting duo indicates, Ballard has even since publicly noted that he is not trading his demoted 3rd-year quarterback, who was the former 4th overall pick of the 2023 NFL Draft and has been limited to just 15 starts through his first two seasons in Indianapolis.
Whether that would hold up if the Colts actually received a ‘king’s ransom’ for Richardson remains to be seen (I’m guessing not!), but it’s realistically highly unlikely right now that Indianapolis would get more than a 4th round pick, especially when looking at the recent Trey Lance trade from San Francisco to Dallas.
Given newly named starter Daniel Jones’ own struggles with consistency, turnovers, and injuries, and Richardson is arguably more valuable than that as a top backup quarterback option right now—and having one more year with a cap hit of $10.8M left on his current rookie deal (unless Indianapolis picks up his first round 5th-year club option) gives Indianapolis some added future flexibility.
The young quarterback’s early career has so far been a roller coaster ride both on-and-off the field. There’s been flashes of greatness, only to see some fairly deep lows, and the Colts can’t seem to make up their minds on whether they actually want to definitively sit or start him going forward—having yanked him both back-and-forth between starting and sitting.
It’s a fair question of whether they gave him a legitimate shot to compete this offseason or whether 3rd-year head coach Shane Steichen’s mind was already reasonably well made up after signing Jones to a 1-year, $14.5M deal.
This offseason, despite Richardson arguably outplaying him on the practice fields, Jones (at least publicly) won the job because of his consistency, reliability, and command of the Colts offense—along with his reported pristine practice and off-the-field work and study habits.
However, for a Colts organization that once preached continued patience and the need for obtaining meaningful experience regarding Richardson’s early career development, it’s strange for them to do perform a 180, especially to sit him for Jones of all potential starting quarterback options for 2025.
While Richardson showed signs of growth and maturity following his 2-game midseason benching last season—after demonstrating too much naivety and not taking the QB1 leadership role seriously enough, it leads me to wonder whether there’s more to this story behind the scenes professionally, that we simply do not know publicly yet.
0 CommentsSee More:
