Stampede Blue
How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? The world may never know.
That is the type of sentiment that encapsulates the decision to start Daniel Jones over Anthony Richardson for the 2025 Indianapolis Colts. It isn’t that the choice is unbelievable. It feels more like not having all the pieces to the puzzle. Richardson didn’t run away with the competition by any means, but it looked like he did enough to retain the role. Fans can point to on the field action as the source of truth, but so much more goes into a coach’s decision regarding who should be the starter. Maybe the answers will come out soon. Maybe we will never truly know what ultimately led to this choice. All we can do now is speculate.
Let’s start with what we saw.
Richardson was injury prone. That isn’t really a matter of opinion at this point. He missed the last few plays against Jacksonville in his rookie debut, suffered a concussion against the Texans, sustained an A/C joint injury that cost him the majority of his rookie year, left the Steelers game early with a hip pointer, had back spasms to end the year, and suffered a dislocated pinky to kick things off this season*. This is the start of his third year mind you…* That is a lot for any quarterback’s career let alone the first two years. It would be impossible for Steichen to have faith that Ricardson would hold up over the course of a season. Jones has his own lengthy injury history, so while Richardson struggled to stay on the field, this doesn’t seem like the ultimate reason for the decision.
Let’s stay on the field but look at performance. A 47.7% completion percentage isn’t going to keep the dogs at bay for long. That is exactly why Chris Ballard brought in Jones. He saw a quarterback bottoming out with the third lowest completion percentage in twenty years. That is not a starting quarterback caliber number. Additionally, while there were exciting chunk plays, there were too many stalled drives. Richardson couldn’t seem to move the ball with any consistency. Yes, we can look at his preseason numbers against Jones in this department, but preseason must be taken with a grain of salt. The results have been on the field the last two seasons.
Richardson simply wasn’t ready. This could be a deep dive, but he wasn’t always up to the task. Rumors aside, let’s once again focus on what we know. A raw prospect that was supposed to have time to develop wasn’t given that opportunity. That is on the Colts. What is on Richardson is just as damaging, however. The “tap-out” against Houston appears to be the albatross around his neck. It was the moment he lost the locker room and Shane Steichen’s respect. His conditioning wasn’t there, and neither was his ability to understand situational football. An offseason in between didn’t appear to remedy...
