Make a decision by Monday, and make it Anthony Richardson

The great quarterback derby continues to churn. Now it's time to commit.

The great Colts quarterback derby needs to end this weekend. Come Monday, Shane Steichen needs to name his opening-game starting quarterback. Seriously, if you don’t know by now, after weeks of training camp, two joint practices and two preseason games, it might be the case that you don’t have a quality starting quarterback on the roster.

At some point – and I’m saying Monday – Steichen owes it to his team to end this quarterback competition, name a starter and give him all the first-team snaps from now until the opening game.

It becomes a case of diminishing returns. At some point, soon, the players need to know who their leader behind center is going to be, and the putative starter needs all the first-team snaps he can get these final two weeks. It makes no sense, at least for the team at large, to stretch this out and look at the Cincinnati preseason finale as a final audition.

I asked Steichen precisely that question Thursday and he sort-of answered it. Or at least it qualified as an answer coming from the famously circumspect Steichen.

“We’ll work through that,” he said. “We obviously had today (Thursday), we got a preseason game (Saturday at home against Green Bay), we got some practices next week and we’ll work through it. Again, I don’t have an exact timetable on it, but sooner than later would be nice.”

Put simply, it would be insane, and a bad sign of things to come, if this competition extends to the final preseason game against Cincinnati. Two years ago, Steichen named Richardson the starter over Gardner Minshew after the first preseason game. These players deserve to know, and they deserve to have two full weeks to work together as a first-team offense.

Asked if he might use the Cincinnati game as another chance to evaluate the quarterbacks, Steichen was similarly vague.

“We’ll see, I’ll work through that,” he said. “And if I have a decision before that game, then we’ll see where it goes.”

Oh.