Who's to blame for Richardson's impending exit from the Colts? Let's start with...everybody

The Colts committed organizational malpractice. Richardson was also culpable, failing to understand what it takes to be a franchise quarterback. Now, the QB is looking elsewhere.

First, you can’t blame Anthony Richardson for wanting out. And I’d suggest the Colts didn’t put up much of a fight attempting to keep him in Indianapolis. I’d go even further and suggest this was a mutual decision altogether, but it sends a better message to prospective trade partners to say it was Richardson’s call.

If any player in the history of the game needs a fresh start more than Richardson, the star-crossed Colts quarterback, I’d like to see him. If it wasn’t so sad – and serious – it would be funny, in an outrageous way. The young man nearly lost his eye in an accident with a resistance band, for crying out loud. Every time he got on the field, it seemed, some cruel fate would befall him. There are just so many freak injuries a player can incur before you mildly suggest he’s injury-prone. What, you have a better explanation?

When he played, however infrequently, he showed tantalizing bursts of otherworldly talent. He ran like a SUV. He had a howitzer for an arm; his back-footed, 60-yard TD bomb to Alec Pierce in the 2024 season opener against Houston remains the best throw I’ve seen, anywhere, from an NFL quarterback in the past 10 years.

But there was a problem. We saw those flourishes of talent maybe 5%-10% of the time. The rest of the time, he was tossing it to the wrong zip code. A quality NFL quarterback completes nearly 70 percent of his passes. Richardson completed 47% during his last stint as a starter.

I remember being at a journalism gala several years ago, and I came across a gentleman who does TV in Florida. The Colts had recently drafted Richardson, and here was this man’s take after several years of covering UF football: “He’s going to get everybody fired.”