Yahoo Sports Daily hosts Caroline Fenton and Jason Fitz react to reports that Indianapolis Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson will request a trade this offseason and discuss what’s next for the fourth overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft. Watch the full episode of Yahoo Sports Daily on YouTube or YahooSports.TV.
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Video Transcript
How about we take a look at Anthony Richardson?
All right, he’s coming back from a freak eye socket injury in the gym, and according to reports, he’s, gonna request a trade.
Now, there’s a lot of conversation.
Remember, Daniel Jones is technically a free agent, so what’s gonna happen with the Colts and Daniel Jones?
What are they gonna do?
What are they going to do with Anthony Richardson?
They still hold Anthony Richardson’s rights, but he wants to be traded.
Would that actually happen, given the fact that he costs a little bit more money, or would he hit the open market?
I don’t know, but we love reclamation projects.
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Can Anthony Richardson be a reclamation project?
Can he be the next Sam Darnold, the next Baker Mayfield, the next i- insert quarterback that goes to another team and suddenly finds success?
Anthony Richardson was a raw product coming out of Florida, and I thought, “Look, he’s got all of the talent in the world.
His ceiling is sky high,” but he’s gonna have to go somewhere that approaches his development with a whole lot of patience, because he was a project quarterback coming out of Florida.
That’s not a bad thing, but that’s what he was.
But the Indianapolis Colts were impatient.
They wanted to start him right away, and he got hurt, and he’s continued to get hurt.
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And the only way that you can develop is by playing football and getting live snaps and playing in live games.
That’s part of the reason why Sam Darnold and Baker Mayfield and Daniel Jones were those kind of reclamation projects, because they saw a lot of football, because they spent a lot of time in this league with offensive masterminds, because they got several opportunities, and they were able to make mistakes and learn from them.
Anthony Richardson hasn’t made a lot of mistakes in the National Football League, because he hasn’t had opportunity to make them, because he hasn’t been on the field.
So I think at this point, now that he’s going into, what, year three, year four in the NFL, and he’s played very minimal football, I don’t have a whole lot of optimism that Anthony Richardson can come to fruition and reach that ceiling, because he I, I think at this point, Fitz, I think the Colts ruined him.
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I don’t think the Colts necessarily did themselves any favors, and I said at the time, to be consistent, that him getting injured his rookie year and then the Colts having success was the worst thing that could happen for everybody, because he didn’t get that time on task to grow with the team that was growing at the same time.
I, I understand all of the bad things that have happened.
I just have a hard time placing all of the blame on the Colts, when it feels to me like when you’ve had multiple experienced backup quarterbacks come in and beat you for the job, you’ve had years’ worth of opportunity to watch and learn and get better in the room, and we just, Caroline, haven’t seen that from him.
So I think he has to shoulder some of the blame.