How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? The world may never know.
That is the type of sentiment that encapsulates the decision to start Daniel Jones over Anthony Richardson for the 2025 Indianapolis Colts. It isn’t that the choice is unbelievable. It feels more like not having all the pieces to the puzzle. Richardson didn’t run away with the competition by any means, but it looked like he did enough to retain the role. Fans can point to on the field action as the source
of truth, but so much more goes into a coach’s decision regarding who should be the starter. Maybe the answers will come out soon. Maybe we will never truly know what ultimately led to this choice. All we can do now is speculate.
Let’s start with what we saw.
Richardson was injury prone. That isn’t really a matter of opinion at this point. He missed the last few plays against Jacksonville in his rookie debut, suffered a concussion against the Texans, sustained an A/C joint injury that cost him the majority of his rookie year, left the Steelers game early with a hip pointer, had back spasms to end the year, and suffered a dislocated pinky to kick things off this season. This is the start of his third year mind you… That is a lot for any quarterback’s career let alone the first two years. It would be impossible for Steichen to have faith that Ricardson would hold up over the course of a season. Jones has his own lengthy injury history, so while Richardson struggled to stay on the field, this doesn’t seem like the ultimate reason for the decision.
Let’s stay on the field but look at performance. A 47.7% completion percentage isn’t going to keep the dogs at bay for long. That is exactly why Chris Ballard brought in Jones. He saw a quarterback bottoming out with the third lowest completion percentage in twenty years. That is not a starting quarterback caliber number. Additionally, while there were exciting chunk plays, there were too many stalled drives. Richardson couldn’t seem to move the ball with any consistency. Yes, we can look at his preseason numbers against Jones in this department, but preseason must be taken with a grain of salt. The results have been on the field the last two seasons.
Richardson simply wasn’t ready. This could be a deep dive, but he wasn’t always up to the task. Rumors aside, let’s once again focus on what we know. A raw prospect that was supposed to have time to develop wasn’t given that opportunity. That is on the Colts. What is on Richardson is just as damaging, however. The “tap-out” against Houston appears to be the albatross around his neck. It was the moment he lost the locker room and Shane Steichen’s respect. His conditioning wasn’t there, and neither was his ability to understand situational football. An offseason in between didn’t appear to remedy much. Look at the Baltimore preseason game in which he failed to recognize basic coverage. Instead of shifting coverage or bringing in someone else to block, Richardson failed to see there were more defenders than blockers and paid the price. That shouldn’t be a year three issue.
Time to go behind the curtain; the curtain we rarely see behind. We only see what coaches and players allow us to see. Jones was touted as more prepared, professional, and better able to win over the locker room. Those are the public feathers in his cap. Cam Turner, the quarterback’s coach, said he did all he could to get Richardson ready. That sounds like someone who is stating no matter what they did, Richardson was never going to get it. I imagine that is the assessment he gave for things Steichen didn’t witness in person. Look, we have all worked at a job where we knew a particular coworker was simply never going to get it. They might be a great person, but professionally, it was never going to happen no matter how much time and attention the organization pumped into them. Sometimes, it is better to go separate ways. That appears to be the case with Richardson and the Colts.
Will we ever get the full, unredacted story? Who knows. There is a good chance we will get bits and pieces. I anticipate there could be a story from Stephen Holder somewhere around week seven with what happened behind the scenes. That is the only conclusion I can come to; the on the field product wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t enough to give up on two years in. There has to be more to the story that we aren’t privy to. Maybe it was the tap-out, maybe it was something else, but something caused the switch to Daniel Jones to occur. The true “why” is what lingers now. Unfortunately, the world may never know.
