[JAFF]

Doyel: When Anthony Richardson, Colts struggle, are we going to lash out & make it worse?

INDIANAPOLIS – We’re in this together, you and me. Who’s you? All of you. The Indianapolis Colts. Their fans. The media around here. All of us.

We.

This is another Anthony Richardson story.

He’s going to struggle this season. He’ll have moments where we see exactly why the Colts took him No. 4 overall in the 2023 NFL Draft, moments we saw in two preseason appearances, but aside from those occasional bolts of greatness he didn’t look good. He didn’t even look ready.

He’ll get better, but this season he’ll struggle a lot, and the Colts will lose – a lot.


This is where you and me enter the story. Yes, us. We need to make a pact, right here and now, to do everything we can for Richardson, for the Colts – for our city – to get through this season. Because it’s going to get unpleasant around here, and we can do one of two things: We can make it easier on Richardson.

Or we can make it worse.

This is a story you’ve always wanted to read, but nobody would dare write. Until now.

Aug 24, 2023; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Indianapolis Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson warms up before a game against the Philadelphia Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field.
Don't be like Phillies fans

Let’s do something I won’t suggest again: Let’s learn from fans of the Philadelphia Phillies.

They’re a brutal bunch up there, meatheads who confuse toughness with cruelty, proudly booing everything and everybody. Players go into Philadelphia talking publicly about how much they’ll love playing for such a “passionate” group, and they leave talking privately about how miserable it was.


Because in Philadelphia, where they want to win so badly it can suck the joy out of the process, fans make it harder on the home team. Fueled by booze and desperation and decades of self-fulfilling prophecy, they turn on the home team when it struggles.

Dumbest crowds in professional sports are in Philadelphia, just a notch dumber than those in New York, who also jump on struggling home players with both lungs, as if that’ll help. Sure, dummies, why not? A slumping player doesn’t want to improve for the sake of himself or his family or team, but here’s what will help:


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See how much his own fans despise him.

Brilliant!

But it’s what they do, booing their own, thinking that getting into the heads of a struggling player will somehow make things … better? You can’t talk sense into those people. Find one of the tweets I’ll be sharing about this story. Look at the mentions. You’ll be able to identify folks from Philadelphia and New York within a few words, and not because of their spelling, even though the kind of people who use Twitter to be cruel tend to be stupid, or billionaires.


We deal in facts here. So let’s talk about Trea Turner.

Yes, this is a story about Anthony Richardson.

OK, standing ovation for Trea Turner helped

On Aug. 4 the Phillies had lost eight of 14 games to fall out of the NL East race and slide to the second and final spot in the NL wild-card standings, just one-half game ahead of the field. One of the Phillies’ problems was Trea Turner, their $300 million shortstop signed in the offseason.

This is a story about Anthony Richardson, promise.

Turner was hitting .235, a staggering 67 points below his .302 career average. The Philadelphia crowd had been crushing him for months, getting angrier the more he struggled, a vicious cycle. By Aug. 4, 2023 the Phillies had dropped him to No. 8 in the lineup. He’d gone 3-for-29 on the seven-game road trip, a .103 batting average. He was bad and getting worse, and this was a disaster, and the Phillies were returning home that night to play the Pirates, and you just knew the crowd was going to give it to Turner.

Here he comes to the plate for the first time, in the second inning, and the crowd gives it to him:

A standing ovation.

It goes and goes, and in the batter’s box Turner is looking around in shock and in the crowd his mom has tears streaming down her face and here at my laptop, writing these words, I’m getting goosebumps. Because it was that special.

Here's what happened next: Turner got hot.

In 28 games since the standing ovation, Turner is hitting .362 with 12 home runs and 33 RBI. He’s playing like an MVP candidate and taking the Phillies along for the ride. They’ve gone 17-11 to move into first place in the NL wild card standings, 2½ games clear of the field. Turner did that, yes, but so did the fans of Philadelphia. They got this bright idea to get out of his head and do something different:

Support him.

Now there are billboards all over Philadelphia, messages to the city from Trea Turner:

Thank you, Philly.

We deal in facts here. So let’s talk about Anthony Richardson.

Stay calm: Anthony Richardson will struggle

Richardson completed just 53.8% of his passes in his one season as Florida’s starting quarterback and was worse in two 2023 NFL preseason games for the Colts: 13-for-29 with an interception and no touchdowns, a completion rate of 44.7%.

Richardson looked fine in his exhibition debut against Buffalo, going 7-for-12 with a handful of drops, but not in the next game against a Philadelphia defense resting its starters: 6-for-17 for 78 yards.

Doyel on Richardson's preseason debut: Rookie QB isn't the problem vs. Bills

Doyel on his second outing: Richardson shows massive talent, flaws vs. Philadelphia

It’ll be a struggle this season, is my point. Richardson’s a smart young man, but the mental work – reading complex NFL defenses – takes time. That’s how it was for the best quarterback in franchise history, Peyton Manning (56.7% accuracy, 28 interceptions as a rookie). That’s how it was for the active NFL quarterback compared most commonly to Richardson, Josh Allen of Buffalo (52.8% accuracy as a rookie). That’s how it will be for Richardson.

He’s going to have some bad days this season. How many games do the Colts play, 17? Richardson will have at least 10 bad days, and that’s me being nice.

This is where we have a choice to make, you and me. The first game or two, it’ll be easy. We’re still in the honeymoon phase with Richardson – you as fans, us in the media – and we know he’ll struggle. The first few games will come and go without incident. No booing from the crowd. No biting from the media.

But it’s a long season. How are you going to react in late November when the Colts are home against the Bucs and Richardson enters his 11th game with a completion rate of, say, 52%? By then the Colts will be 2-8 or 3-7, something like that, and the honeymoon will be over.

You going to boo? You’ll be tempted, especially if you’re booing general manager Chris Ballard or owner Jim Irsay for allowing this to happen. But here’s what I can tell you:

Richardson will hear those boos, and he’ll blame himself. He’s that kind of kid, the best kind, which means you can use his sense of obligation against him … or give him a break.

Same goes for me and the rest of us in the media, though let’s be honest: I’m the one most likely to bite. We all know that. I’m the either meanest media member in town, or the most honest. I know which description some of you would choose. Sigh.


Here’s our pact, OK? You go easy on Anthony Richardson this season. If you want to let Ballard or Irsay know you’re upset, find another way. A sign in the upper deck, a banner from an airplane, a call to a radio show. But don’t make Lucas Oil Stadium unpleasant for Richardson. That’s his home, and first impressions are forever impressions.

I’ll do my part, showing patien—

Showing patienc—

Sorry, struggling here.

OK fine, I’ll do my part, showing patience for Richardson, even when he goes – hypothetically speaking – 9-for-21 with three ugly interceptions during a game in December.

Let’s make Richardson feel welcome here, and not just for his sake. You do it for you, and I’ll do it for me. The best thing that can happen for you, a fan wanting to cheer a winner, and for me – a writer needing the home team to win big someday, because happy fans are reading fans – is for Richardson to survive this season and come back in 2024 ready to dominate .


By Josh Allen’s third season in Buffalo, the Bills were 13-3 and he was second in the MVP race. Peyton got there even quicker, going 13-3 and finishing second in the MVP race in his second season with the Colts.

What’s it going to be for Anthony Richardson? Depends mainly on him, of course. You and me, we’re not that important. But as the Good Ship Anthony Richardson sets sail Sunday against Jacksonville, remember this: We can put some wind in his face – or we can put it into his sails.