1. With Anthony Richardson out, Joe Flacco’s steady hand – and strong arm – nearly led the Colts to a victory.
With the Jacksonville Jaguars leading, 34-20, and just five minutes left on the clock, the Colts leaned into the demeanor of their Week 5 starting quarterback. And Joe Flacco, the 17-year been-there-done-that veteran, helped set the right tone for the Colts’ offense before they even hit the field for the first of two drives that wound up resulting in the game being tied at 34 only a few minutes later.
“He’s poised,” wide receiver Alec Pierce said. “They call him Joe Cool, that’s kind of just his demeanor. He never gets too up, too down. So he was kind of telling us all ‘Let’s go, we can make plays, we can do this.’ He just remained cool which is good, keeps everyone in that moment.”
Moments like the final five minutes of the fourth quarter on Sunday were why the Colts signed Flacco this offseason: If Richardson wasn’t able to play, they needed a backup who could – to use a baseball metaphor – not just get on base, but hit a home run if needed. Flacco, with a 45-yard completion to Pierce that set up a Trey Sermon one-yard touchdown and then a 65-yard game-tying touchdown to Pierce, hit the end of Sunday’s game out of the park.
Thanks to Flacco’s poise and ability to push the ball downfield, the Colts needed just five plays to erase the Jaguars’ 14-point lead late in the fourth quarter.
“He did great,” head coach Shane Steichen said. “Obviously he came out and operated at a high level, hit the big plays when we needed them, especially at the end. I mean, a (three)-play drive to get in there and the next was a two-play drive to bang it in there and get us tied up. He had a hell of a game.”
Flacco got the start with Richardson sidelined due to an oblique injury. Richardson was limited in practice all week and then was downgraded from questionable to doubtful on Saturday.
“I didn’t want to put him out there in harm’s way on certain things,” Steichen said of Richardson.
Flacco, though, was able to navigate the week of practice while not knowing for certain if he’d get to play Sunday.
“I did what I know,” Flacco said. “Even in the last few weeks, I’m trying to stay in that routine of being the guy. Obviously, you can’t quite get to that spot, like I wish there was something you could take and it would turn the blinders on, and you just thought you were starting all week and then all of a sudden you showed up right before the game and they told you you weren’t, because there is a little bit of a difference, obviously. But that’s the fight of being the backup is trying to maintain that routine every day.
“I tell people in that role, you kind of distract yourself from thinking about Sunday on Tuesday by that routine. You come in and you take care of Tuesday, you come in and you take care of Wednesday, and you feel good about what you did. You do this, this, this, you go home at night and you’re like ‘Oh man I did it all, I feel good.’ You feel good and you’re not thinking about Sunday and letting the weight of that kind of get on you.”
The Colts hope to have Richardson back behind center as QB1 sooner rather than later. Steichen said Monday Richardson is “feeling good” and the Colts will evaluate his status as this week progresses.