Colts Richardson Shows Tremendous Ability to Rebound from Rough Starts

Indianapolis Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson has shown Superman ability thus far, but he needs to perfect his Clark Kent going forward

Sep 15, 2024; Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA; Indianapolis Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson (5) prior to the game against the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images / Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images

Indianapolis Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson has started, and finished, four games in his NFL career with a total of 274 offensive snaps under his belt. It may be too early to make grandiose predictions about the young passer's future, but we can look at some of the early trends in his play thus far.

In 274 snaps played, Richardson has thrown for 993 yards with six touchdown passes and five interceptions. He has also added 35 rushes for 229 yards and five touchdowns on the ground in his limited playing time. His completion percentage (55.5%) may be a bit lower than the league average, but it isn't too uncommon for young quarterbacks to start low in that regard.

The raw numbers are perfectly fine, if not better than fine, for a relatively inexperienced passer that is the youngest starter in the league. Diving deeper into the advanced stats, however, paints an interesting picture of Richardson's play.

Richardson has trailed by at least two scores in every fourth quarter that he has played in thus far with the Colts. A massive part of the reason for that is Richardson's own play at quarterback, as he ranks 45th out of 46 qualifying quarterbacks since 2023 in EPA/play + CPOE composite in quarters one through three (minimum 100 snaps played). He also ranks 41st in offensive success rate and 40th in total EPA/play under those parameters.

To put it into non-analytics terms, Richardson is a negative impact player for the Colts in quarters one through three in his six starts with the team. His EPA/play and success rate stats in those quarters put him in a tier with players like Bryce Young, Mac Jones, and Zach Wilson over the past two seasons. His costly turnovers and relatively ineffective play during those quarters has contributed to the massive deficits the team has seen in fourth quarters.

¡¡ANTHONY RICHARDSON THROWS AN INTERCEPTION, XAVIER MCKINNEY WITH THE PICK!!#Colts 0-10 #Packers
pic.twitter.com/trR7gERT9s

— Crazy NFL (@NFLCrazy_) September 15, 2024

Those numbers, and the names listed aside Richardson, are quite concerning, but there is still one more quarter of data to look at for the young passer. In the fourth quarter, Richardson drastically turns it around, regardless of what his play looked like earlier in the game. His EPA/play + CPOE composite in quarter four ranks just behind Brock Purdy and Josh Allen since 2023 and he leads all quarterbacks in EPA/play (minimum 50 snaps played). His overall success rate also ranks fourth among passers in quarter four since 2023.

The logical counterargument to this massive jump in production in the fourth quarter is that defenses are sitting back and allowing Richardson to pick up garbage time stats on underneath throws, but that simply isn't the case. His average air yards actually climbs from 7.6 to 14.6 in the fourth quarters of these games. In two of the four games, he led drives that either matched the opponent's scoring (week one vs. Houston Texans in 2024) or outright tied the game (week four vs. Los Angeles Rams in 2023). Richardson actually pushes the ball downfield more when he gets desperate late in games.

Five of Richardson's 11 career touchdowns have come in the fourth quarter of games. Essentially, Richardson has shown that gamer mentality to will his team back into football games even when everything is going wrong for his offense/his team.

Lmao pic.twitter.com/jwFvUN9sl5

— Zach Hicks (@ZachHicks2) September 18, 2024

With all this data in mind, what conclusions can we possibly draw on this young quarterback so far? Well, we know that he (and the entire Colts' offense) has struggled to generate points prior to the fourth quarter in his early starts. The Colts have yet to break 20 points by the fourth quarter in any of his starts thus far and they have been at 10 or fewer points in three of the four opportunities.

The interesting aspect of Richardson's play, however, is his ability to play Superman in the fourth quarter. He doesn't resign himself to a loss late in tough game, he actively pushes the ball downfield in hopes of pulling off the improbably comeback. It can lead to some mistakes in the process (like we saw last week vs. Green Bay), but that true gamer ability to turn it up a notch late is a really promising sign in the young quarterback.

The next step for Richardson and the Colts is to actually get off to a fast start in a game and improve upon the truly dreadful offensive production early in these outings. The Colts eventually need to carry a lead into a fourth quarter of a game to see if that same gamer mentality that Richardson has shown in deficits can lead to some put away drives on opponents.

Overall, this has been a good development for the league's youngest starting quarterback. We should be able to see some of his fourth quarter magic show up more frequently once the game in general slows down for him. As of right now, Richardson has the Superman aspects of the position down, he just needs to work on perfecting the Clark Kent going forward.

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