Anthony Richardson wanted out of Indianapolis. He asked for a trade this offseason. He did not get one. And now he is calling that failure the best thing that could have happened to him.
The 23-year-old quarterback spoke to reporters at his high school jersey retirement ceremony this weekend and put a positive spin on a situation that looked bleak just a few weeks ago. The Colts kept him. He showed up at voluntary OTAs anyway. He sounded thankful.
“The Colts are still giving me a chance to go out there and work, work hard and potentially get on the field,” Richardson told reporters. “Glad to be able to stay in the NFL and put the work in. Just showing up at OTAs, it was a blessing in disguise for me because I just wanted to work and they allowed me to do that so I’m thankful for that.”
Here is the reality check. Richardson is the backup. Daniel Jones is QB1. The Colts looked at the market this spring, decided keeping Richardson as insurance was smarter than dumping him for spare parts, and moved on.
Richardson was reportedly linked to a handful of teams. None of those situations materialized. The Colts found a backup veteran they liked better than what was on the trade market, and the door slammed shut.
The career numbers tell you why. Richardson has appeared in 17 NFL games. He has thrown for 11 touchdowns against 13 interceptions. Those are not the numbers of a quarterback teams line up to trade for, and Indianapolis was not going to give him away for nothing.
What Richardson does have is one of the most freakish athletic profiles the league has seen at the quarterback position in years. He runs like a tight end. He throws the ball through walls. The athletic tools are real. The football has not caught up.
The “blessing in disguise” framing is the smart play. Public posturing matters when you are a backup quarterback hoping for another shot. Sulking on social media would have made him radioactive. Showing up to OTAs and saying the right things keeps him in the conversation if Jones goes down or if a team comes calling at the trade deadline.
Whether Richardson actually believes it is a blessing is a different question. Asking for a trade is not something a player does unless he is convinced the current situation is a dead end. He thought it was a dead end six weeks ago. Now he says it is a blessing. Both things cannot be true.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. Richardson is stuck. The Colts are stuck with him. And the best path forward for both sides is exactly what is happening: he works, they evaluate, and the next move waits for the season to play out.
If Jones struggles, Richardson is one snap away from the job he thought he had lost forever. That is the version of the blessing that actually matters.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
