Indianapolis Colts young quarterback Anthony Richardson is one of the most dangerous quarterbacks in the league with his legs when he decides to run the ball, but he also missed nearly his entire rookie season with a shoulder injury. As a result, it sounds like the team would like him to be a little more careful when it comes to running the ball.
While the Colts clearly don’t want Anthony Richardson to stop running – his athleticism is a big reason why they drafted him in the first place – head coach Shane Steichen made it clear that they would like their young quarterback to find a “happy medium” between protecting himself and taking hits as a runner.
“I mean, it’s just being smart on when to get down,” Steichen told Albert Breer of SI.com. “It’s a happy medium. There’s a time and a place where it’s fourth down and you gotta have it and the game’s on the line, where you gotta go get it. But if it’s first-and-10 and you scramble and you can make it second-and-4 and take a big hit or make it second-and-6 and get down, ‘Hey, let’s make it second-and-6.’”
It’s pretty clear that the team would like to see Richardson be a little more careful on the field, but in a recent interview, Richardson made it very clear that he has no intention of changing the way that he plays because he does not believe that it is necessary.
“Changing my game and my play style? I don’t feel like there’s anything wrong with my play style,” Richardson said last month. “People see me, I’m a big quarterback, so they always think, ‘Oh, he wants to run the ball all the time, he wants to be physical and that’s what’s gonna get him hurt.’ But that’s not the case. The times I did get hurt. . . . The one time, the one concussion, that was me completely because I slowed down by the end zone — you’re never supposed to do that. Everything else, it just happened because we play a dangerous game, and there’s nothing I can do about that.
“But necessarily changing my play? I don’t think I’m gonna change it, but being smart, knowing when to get extra yards and knowing when to get down, I feel like I know how to do that. It’s just I have to do it and do it at the right time, I guess. I don’t know if I’m gonna change my game, but being smarter for the team, of course.”
We’ll have to see whether or not Richardson ultimately does decide to be a little more conservative with the hits he takes.
[SI]
