News broke yesterday that former Florida Football star Anthony Richardson was benched by the Indianapolis Colts following their defeat to the Houston Texans. Richardson was chastised after the game after he told himself out for one play and admitted afterwards that he was "tired."
But fatigue alone isn't why Richardson will be spending the next game on the sidelines, and everything going wrong for him with the Colts are things we warned about in the pre-draft process.
Florida Football: Buyer Beware
So we here at Hail Florida Hail may just be fans who live in their basements, at least according to Billy Napier, but sometimes we like to think we know what we are talking about.
Back on November 27, 2022, we wrote a piece titled "Anthony Richardson is not ready for the NFL."
Here is just a sampling of what we wrote:
"The biggest is that he simply isn't accurate enough on short to intermediate routes to sustain drives with enough consistency. How many times this year did we see Richardson sail a five yard-route or throw a screen pass into the dirt?
Richardson finished the year with a completion percentage of 53.8%, which doesn't even sniff the top 100 completion percentages in FBS this season. His nine interceptions however were the 28th most in the country and his interception rate of 2.8% (he threw an interception on 2.8% of his passes) is also towards the bottom of the country.
That simply won't get it done in the NFL, where the worst percentage in the league is Zach Wilson at 55.6%. Even the "running" QBs in the league like Lamar Jackson and Kyler Murray are still north of 60%."
We did a follow-up piece on March 3, 2023, titled "We love Anthony Richardson, but understand the risk."
We highlighted some similar warning signs NFL fans needed to be cautious of:
"Truthfully, what NFL teams are drafting is that off chance that he reaches that ceiling and becomes the next Joe Burrow or Patrick Mahomes.
If he turns out to be the next Zach Wilson, teams can recover given how the NFL salary cap works.
There are a lot of red flags though that pull him closer to Wilson than Burrow.
The biggest of which is his overall accuracy. While he can hit the 50-yard deep bomb, he can't hit the 5-yard out with any consistency. While he can run for 50+ yards if he needs to, he can't hit a 10-yard curl with consistency.
In that FSU game, Richardson was 9-27 passing. Against Kentucky, he was 14-35. USF was 10-18 and even in the rout of South Carolina, he was only 11-23.
His overall completion percentage with Florida football in 2022 was 53.8%. To put in perspective how bad that is, Quinn Ewers from Texas was 100th in the nation in completion percentage at 58%."
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
There is an argument to be made that Richardson was thrown into the fire way too soon for a situation he simply wasn't ready for. Had he been drafted later in the first round or even in the second round, he would have had the benefit of time to figure some things out.
And while he has had is viral moments over these past two seasons, the NFL is a win or be benched league. With a completion percentage of 44.4%, Richardson is dead last in the NFL among qualified QBs.
So even though he only gets sacked 16.4% of the time when pressured, the 11th-best rate in the NFL, and he has 242 yards rushing, an average of 40 yards per game, he just can't sustain enough drives with simple third-down completions.
Only once have the Colts topped 30 points in the 10 games Richardson has appeared in.
This won't be the end of Richardson's story. High draft picks like him keep finding ways to stick around in the NFL long after everyone has left them for dead,
It is a reminder that you can run like Superman, but if you can't mix in some simple Clark Kent stuff, you don't get to be on the field in the NFL.