Why it's too soon to know if Colts QB Anthony Richardson can fix his accuracy

INDIANAPOLIS — Anthony Richardson might never be accurate enough to be the franchise quarterback the Colts desperately need.

He’s not right now.

Richardson’s inaccuracy has been his fatal flaw through the first seven starts of his career, the cloud overshadowing the flashes of brilliance and awe-inspiring ability he’s shown so far.

But the Colts knew that when they drafted him. Indianapolis used the No. 4 pick of the 2023 NFL Draft on Richardson, in general manager Chris Ballard’s words, because of “what we think he can really be in the future.”

Everybody wants answers to that question right now.

The reality is nobody knows.

Not at this point, seven starts into his NFL career. No matter how many examples they cite, how talented they were as a player, how much coaching experience they have, how loud they shout into a microphone.

History says Richardson’s career could still go either way.

The potential payoff is high enough that the Colts need to stick with their young quarterback long enough to find out what he’s going to be.

The raw numbers

Richardson has completed 54.8% of his passes through the first seven starts of his career, leading to a passer rating of 72.7.

Those numbers are ugly. Every one of the 33 NFL quarterbacks who had enough attempts to qualify last season posted higher completion percentages and passer ratings than Richardson so far; the NFL’s league averages in 2023 were 64.5% and an 89.0 passer rating.

The Colts quarterback clearly has a long way to go.

He has also started just seven games in the NFL, and there have been plenty of first-round quarterbacks who have been far less than league-average passers through their first seven games in the modern era. According to IndyStar research, 33 first-round quarterbacks posted a quarterback rating of 75 or less in their first seven NFL starts; 12 of those 33 passers, or 36.3%, ended up becoming at least solid starters in the NFL. A handful have become stars, led by players like Josh Allen, Matthew Stafford, Donovan McNabb and Andrew Luck, the man whose mantle Richardson is ultimately trying to restore in Indianapolis.

Completion percentage tells a similar story.

Twenty-eight first-round quarterbacks since 1999 have posted a completion rate of 56% or less in their first seven NFL starts. Nine of those quarterbacks -- 32% -- eventually lifted their career completion rate over 60%.

Those odds are not great.

But those odds are right in line with the discouraging odds facing first-round quarterbacks in the first place. According to USA Today research , there were 74 quarterbacks drafted in the first round between 1999 and 2023 — the six quarterbacks taken in the 2024 first round have been in the NFL for just three games — and just 26 of those players became franchise quarterbacks, 38%.

In other words, Richardson’s odds of fulfilling the Colts’ desperate need for a franchise quarterback are roughly the same, right now, as the night Indianapolis drafted him.

The anomaly

One name is impossible to avoid in all of this.

Josh Allen.

The Buffalo superstar looks like the early frontrunner for the 2024 NFL MVP award; the player who arrived in the NFL as a raw lump of remarkable clay and got refined into something truly special.

Allen represents the mountaintop, the ideal scenario for any team like the Colts that rolled the dice on a first-round quarterback long on physical gifts and short on polish. Drafted No. 7 out of Wyoming despite a .562 completion percentage in college, Allen completed 52% of his passes in an ugly rookie year, improved to 58.8% in his second season and took a giant leap forward the next fall, completing 69.2% of his passes to force his way into any discussion of the NFL’s best quarterbacks.

There is plenty of reason to wonder if Allen’s development can be replicated by anybody else.

For a lot of reasons, though, Allen is impossible to escape in an analysis of Richardson’s struggles to this point in his career, even in a deep dive beyond the two quarterback’s physical similarities, beyond the powerful frames, electric running and howitzer arms.

Unlike most of the other big names who overcame inauspicious starts to their careers, Allen’s career has taken place entirely in the NFL’s analytics era, offering comparisons to Richardson that go beyond the back of the quarterback’s football cards.

For example, Richardson’s completion percentage above expectation currently sits at minus-11.3 percent, according to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats . Completion percentage above expectation is a relatively simple stat; it weighs a quarterback’s actual completion percentage against the completion percentage it should be based on the difficulty of the throw as measured by a number of factors.

At minus-11.3, Richardson is second-worst of the 2024 season so far, trailing only Green Bay’s Jordan Love (who has played just one game). It is also likely a product of small sample size; the Next Gen Stats database goes back to 2018, and only quarterback, Zach Wilson in 2021, has ever posted a completion percentage above expectancy worse than minus-10 over a full season.

A bad completion percentage above expectancy is generally a bad sign; the bottom five to 10 names on those annual lists are typically not stars, although Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson has a history of slightly negative numbers, placing him just outside the bottom rungs.

There is one big name at the bottom of one of those seasons.

Allen posted a minus-8.1 completion percentage above expectancy in 11 starts as a rookie, the worst mark in the NFL, on his way to completing just 52% of his passes.

But there are more similarities between Allen’s rookie year and Richardson’s seven starts to this point. A stylistic preference for the two quarterbacks led to relatively low expected completion percentages for each, Allen’s 60.9 in 2018 comparable to Richardson’s 60.6 so far in 2024.

Unlike a lot of young quarterbacks who focus on short, easy throws, Richardson has pushed the ball down the field through the first three games this season, averaging 12.6 intended yards per target, a number that would be a wild outlier if posted over a full season. Deep throws are less likely to be completed than short throws, although Richardson has struggled more with throws in the short-to-intermediate range than the deep ball.

Only seven quarterbacks have averaged more than 10 yards per target over a full season since Next Gen Stats started publishing its data in 2018.

Allen’s rookie season, when he averaged 11.0 intended air yards per target, is the highest.

None of the similarities between Richardson’s profile as a young passer to date and Allen’s rookie season are an indicator that Richardson will be able to pull off the same transformation that happened in Allen. What happened in Buffalo might be improbable, if not impossible, to duplicate.

Allen is also proof that an inaccurate quarterback can fix his flaws at the NFL level.

His example is going to convince teams to chase Allen's success in Buffalo for a long, long time.

The plan

Richardson is an anomaly in his own right.

Not because of his physical gifts, although those traits have been well-documented, going back to a record-breaking performance at the NFL scouting combine.

But because of his inexperience.

Richardson started just 13 games at Florida, leaving precious little time for development. When Indianapolis drafted him, Colts head coach Shane Steichen was adamant that a raw, inexperienced prospect like Richardson needed playing time to develop.

A quarterback can work diligently on improving his mechanics, footwork and technique in the offseason, and the Colts do plenty of work each week on the fundamentals in practice.

“(Colts quarterbacks coach Cam Turner) does a great job in individual (work) going through footwork stuff, and then it carries over to team drills, and we work those things every single day,” Steichen said. “It’s the footwork, it’s the process of going through your footwork, your drop, all those things.”

But the reality is putting the work into practice in an NFL game is not as simple as it sounds, particularly if a quarterback is not naturally accurate. When a quarterback is trying to make split-second reads, bodies are flying by him in the pocket and receivers might only be open for a moment or two, his body has to instinctively put the fundamentals together.

Richardson has already been feeling the effects of the game on his misses.

“It’s like, ‘Oh my God, it’s wide open, let me give him the ball,’ and I just get too excited, and I just miss him,” Richardson said. “I’ve just got to let it spin and just give him the ball.”

When Indianapolis was scouting Richardson before the 2023 NFL Draft, assistant general manager Ed Dodds asked Richardson, point-blank, why he had a tendency to miss wide-open throws with plenty of time in the pocket, then suddenly fire a pinpoint laser in the middle of dodging pass rushers.

Richardson has missed in more than one kind of situation this season — his second interception against Chicago on Sunday came when he decided to throw back across his body instead of scrambling — but a lot of his misses have happened when he has plenty of time and a wide-open receiver in view.

“It’s like right there,” Richardson said. “You’ve got it and just get too antsy.”

The Colts believe that the more Richardson plays, the more he’ll learn to stay within his own rhythm when he sees a receiver breaking into the open.

“I think it just goes back to repetitions,” Steichen said. “We’ve just got to keep practicing it, keep repping it, and we’ll start hitting those things. I’ve got a ton of confidence in him, like I’ve been telling you guys, and we’re going to keep working those things and get him going.”

The man

The Colts gave everybody a glimpse into Richardson’s mindset after Sunday’s win over the Bears.

The team posted video of Richardson’s post-victory speech in the locker room. The 22-year-old quarterback praised his defensive, his offensive line and his running game, then issued a vow.

“Hey, I’m gonna perform better for y’all boys,” Richardson said. “I got y’all.”

Richardson knows he hasn’t been good enough.

Accurate enough. He’d have to be in hiding to avoid hearing the criticism right now, the conversations about his worthiness to start in the NFL, the proclamations about his future.

“Of course, I’m hearing all the noise or whatever,” Richardson said. “But forget about it.”

Richardson’s post-game speech is evidence that he didn’t need to hear the noise to properly evaluate his own play.

“It’s always frustrating when I’m missing, and pointing to the other team, I’m hitting them right in the chest, and it’s like, ‘Bro, you’re throwing it to the wrong person,’” Richardson said in his postgame interview Sunday. “I’ve just got to do better, man. I’m going to do better. I’m going to clean it up for the team.”

Ultimately, that’s the trait the Colts believe will lift Richardson above the numbers, above the noise and into the rarefied air of the quarterbacks who’ve actually been able to turn it around after a rough start to their careers.

“Because of the person he is,” Steichen said. “The way he works. He comes in every day, he’s ready to roll, man. He puts a lot into it. … A lot of people don’t see the work, right? It’s all done in the dark, in (the Colts’ practice facility), and then at some point, you keep working, you keep working, and that stuff comes to light for everyone to see.”

The reality of playing quarterback in the NFL is that everybody wants to see something right away.

Something that either confirms Richardson can pull off the improbable and transform himself into a complete passer, or something that definitively proves he won’t be able to beat the odds stacked against him.

The hard part is that it’s not time for those answers yet.

Everybody has to wait.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Why it's too soon to know if Colts QB Anthony Richardson can fix his accuracy