During this year's training camp ahead of the 2025 NFL season, the Indianapolis Colts are set to take on their quarterback battle to determine who their best candidate between Anthony Richardson and Daniel Jones could be as their Week One starter in a crucial year ahead.
And if all holds true to form, it should make for a fascinating camp and preseason to unfold, and in the mind of the Colts' brass, will bring out some high-end competition to bring the best out of this group's production.
But, for some, the Colts might be better served to trade one of their quarterbacks before the team even steps on the field for training camp.
Bleacher Report's Gary Davenport was recently tasked to outline one player the Colts should look into trading ahead of the 2025 NFL season, where he landed on one bold, controversial take: of anyone on the roster, ship out Richardson.
"Yes, Anthony Richardson was a top-five pick in the NFL draft. Yes, Richardson is built like a fullback and has arm strength to spare. To say he’s wildly athletic is an understatement. Unfortunately, he’s also wildly inaccurate—last year he completed a woeful 47.7 percent of his passes," Davenport wrote.
"He’s injury-prone—Richardson has missed more games in two years than he has played in. His decision-making hasn’t been good, either—Richardson has more interceptions than touchdown passes," Davenport continued. "Richardson has been so bad that Daniel Jones was brought in to compete for the starting job in Indianapolis. And if that competition truly is fair and open, Jones is going to win—bad though he may be, Jones can at least occasionally throw an accurate pass. That may be harsh, but it's the truth."
"The Colts probably won’t trade Richardson. His salary isn’t prohibitively expensive, Chris Ballard doesn’t want to admit how badly he whiffed on this pick and odds are the offers he would receive aren’t great. But if the Colts did get a reasonable offer for Richardson, they should take it and let some other team figure out what Indy already knows. He’s not an NFL starter—at least at quarterback."
If the Colts were hypothetically interested in a Richardson trade, you would've probably seen that done by now. Yet, Indianapolis isn't ready to write off their top-five pick from just two offseasons ago just yet, and for year three, he has the tools in place for a wildly different outcome than his previous two.
Whether it be having another year in Steichen's system, an added playmaker at the tight end position the Colts have been coveting with Tyler Warren, or even simply the competition in the quarterback room to make him better, there's reason to look at the glass half-full for Richardson in year three.
He'll have have to connect the dots in a lot of areas in his game for that steady confidence to be had from the Colts' staff, centering around his health, turnover issues, and overall accuracy woes, but that can't be done if he's moved out of the building before the season even starts.
Chances are, you won't see Richardson dealt in the weeks ahead of this season, and he'll have every rep to compete for the Colts' starting job with a strong performance before the year ahead kicks off. It'll just be up to him to defy the gloomy narrative surrounding him in what could be a statement bounce-back campaign.
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