Welcome to the NFL, rook: Richardson is solid but unspectacular in debut

Get used to it, friends. Richardson's game was a mixed bag Sunday, but he showed signs that he has the potential to become the Colts franchise quarterback. Stick around: It's going to get fun.

The morning of the first day of the rest of Anthony Richardson’s NFL career, he received a text from his Gainesville Eastside High School coach Cedderick Daniels. It was Psalm 118:24, which Daniels showed me an hour before the game as he settled into his seat in a suite filled with Richardson’s family and friends.

“This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. O Lord, save us. O Lord, grant us success. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

This was the day, the grand and much-anticipated unveiling of the Colts current-and-future quarterback, and while neither Richardson nor his team had the ultimate success, losing 31-21 to the Jaguars, Richardson acquitted himself quite nicely.

It wasn’t a tour de force, and it wasn’t an abject disaster. It was everything we expected it to be, with some inspiring moments, especially when he ran the football, and some flat moments, including a late interception that went a long way toward sealing the Colts’ Sunday fate.

In the end, the third-youngest quarterback ever to start an NFL season opener completed 24-of-37 passes for 223 yards, threw for a touchdown, ran for a touchdown and had one interception, a 79.0 passer rating. Not awe-inspiring, not horrendous. Solid.

The loss notwithstanding, Richardson showed signs, and he went a very long way toward giving this season some juice, a reason to pay attention in what figures to be a competitively dreadful season. The first time he took off on a designed quarterback run, the memories of Matt Ryan and Carson Wentz thankfully faded away. That’s the past, painful and tormenting. Richardson is the present and, most important, the future.