{"id":654236,"date":"2026-01-04T21:44:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T21:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/654236\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T21:44:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T21:44:18","slug":"riley-leonard-shows-promise-in-strong-debut-as-a-first-time-starter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/654236\/","title":{"rendered":"Riley Leonard shows promise in strong debut as a first-time starter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Rookie quarterback <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nfl\/player\/_\/id\/4683423\/riley-leonard\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Riley Leonard<\/a> showed that he belongs after his first NFL start against the Houston Texans in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colts.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Indianapolis Colts<\/a>\u2019 2025-26 regular season finale.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Both Leonard and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nfl\/player\/_\/id\/4429084\/anthony-richardson-sr\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Anthony Richardson<\/a> were dealing with injuries at the time; otherwise, the Colts were expected to roll with one of them after starter <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nfl\/player\/_\/id\/3917792\/daniel-jones\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Daniel Jones<\/a> suffered a season-ending Achilles injury. Leonard did get his first shot of live action after Jones was injured against the Jaguars in early December, where he went 18-29 for 145 passing yards and 1 interception through the air, while adding a rushing score (his first career NFL touchdown).<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Fast forward past the failed Rivers experiment to the regular season finale, and a healthy Riley Leonard was afforded his first opportunity as a starter. He impressed against DeMeco Ryans\u2019s Texans defense, going 21-34 (61.8%) for 270 passing yards (7.9 average), 2 touchdowns, 1 interception, and was sacked once as a passer. He also added 21 rushing yards and 1 touchdown on the ground.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Aside from the interception and one sack taken, Leonard did cough up an untimely fumble that Houston turned into six quick points, though the good far outweighed the bad. He was pushing the ball downfield at a high yet effective rate and used his legs when necessary.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">As far as a meaningless season finale goes, the Colts may not be ready to put all of their eggs into Riley Leonard\u2019s basket, but they at least confirmed their pre-draft suspicions. Leonard, at the very least, is set to be a reliable backup option for the foreseeable future. With rumors running rampant that the Colts are indeed looking to re-sign Daniel Jones \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nfl\/story\/_\/id\/47295871\/sources-daniel-jones-expected-cleared-training-camp\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">who will be working back from his Achilles injury but is reportedly set to return before training camp kicks off<\/a> \u2014 Riley Leonard should be poised to compete for Indy\u2019s starting gig in the upcoming season, and today was about as strong a second audition as one could have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rookie quarterback Riley Leonard showed that he belongs after his first NFL start against the Houston Texans in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2059],"tags":[2005,7,2004,392,3562,2381,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-654236","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-indianapolis-colts","8":"tag-colts","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-indianapolis","11":"tag-indianapolis-colts","12":"tag-indianapolis-colts-news","13":"tag-indianapoliscolts","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115839019590229530","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}