Anthony Richardson and the rise of the high-risk, high-reward quarterback era

We are a week away from the NFL draft and Anthony Richardson fever shows no sign of letting up.

When the quarterback announced he was leaving Florida for the pros after a single season as the Gators starter, observers of the college game scoffed. Sure, he was fun and exciting; he could do things few, if any, college quarterbacks could dream of. But Richardson was horribly inaccurate. Another season in the SEC oven, and he may just round into the kind of polished passer the league would prize. This current version though? Maybe a team would take a flyer at the foot of the first round.

And then something funny happened: Richardson went bananas at the NFL’s scouting combine in Indianapolis. Then, at his pro day in Florida, he launched the ball out of the building – almost.

Now, heading toward draft night, Richardson is the most tantalizing prospect in the class: an inconsistent college quarterback with a combination of size, speed and arm talent the league has never seen.

That’s not hyperbole. Richardson’s performance at the combine was unprecedented. He jumped higher and leapt further than any quarterback prospect in history, while his 40-yard dash was the fourth quickest ever for his position. He had the size and power of Cam Newton with the speed of Michael Vick. In interviews, he reportedly dazzled teams with his smarts and charisma. Did he do anything to assuage concerns that he may struggle to complete passes to his teammates? Mere details, folks.

None of this information was new. Richardson was an otherworldly athlete in college football’s most competitive conference. But the 20-year-old’s performance through the pre-draft cycle has left executives nervous. Nobody wants to be the team that passes on Patrick Mahomes for Mitch Trubisky.

The Carolina Panthers have reportedly settled on ex-Alabama quarterback Bryce Young to be the top selection next Thursday. Their only wobble: Richardson. What if they pass on a once-in-a-lifetime athlete at the most important position in football?

In a league that majors in weird, there are few things more eccentric than the league’s pre-draft circus. Players are pushed and prodded, probed and tested. They’re interviewed, measured and given medical checks. They are evaluated on how well they hold a team owner’s gaze, the vigor of their handshake and the seriousness of their note-taking. Sometimes the players are subject to treatment that is downright offensive.

It is nonsense. Judging a quarterback, for instance, on how far he can leap or how he throws without defenders on the field is like judging an author on how fast she can type. Does it matter if a quarterback can vault over a bus if he cannot identify the blitz?

Richardson is a particularly bizarro prospect. Typically, raw quarterback prospects are maddeningly inconsistent. They can do all of the supernova athlete things but they’ve yet to embrace the nuances of the position. But Richardson is different. All the correct pieces are there, he just doesn’t consistently lay the tiles in the right order, which is different from selecting a player who’s yet to take the jigsaw out of the box. Richardson has shown he can do all the subtle parts of the job, only in short spurts.

Richardson’s pre-draft performance has since morphed into a stand-in for the league’s central tension: Can you develop a quarterback on the fly?

The positive spin: Richardson is a fawn trying to find his legs. He played only one season as a starter. He is often bad, but the good (and his good is great) is already there. The snappy release, the accuracy, the second-reaction plays, it’s all nestled within the tape, though in the smallest of sample sizes. The top-line figures – completion percentage, accuracy rate – make grim reading. But buried under the rubble are the intriguing figures: Richardson leads all draft-eligible quarterbacks in pressure-to-sack rate (he doesn’t go down); his accuracy improves when he’s pressured; he’s a unique threat in the run game. There has never been another quarterback prospect with this kind of athletic upside.

The negative spin: Richardson struggles with the basics that add up to success at the next level. He completed just 53.8% of his passes in 2022, which ranked 105th among 113 FBS quarterbacks. The numbers are jarring, the process behind them even more discouraging. He commits elementary errors. Richardson doesn’t just miss receivers by a little, he misses by yards. You can dig through the tape to find an example of pristine mechanics, but should the one in 100 overrule the other 99? There are plays where it looks as though Richardson has never thrown a ball to a moving target; throws that recall He Who Shall Not Be Named, who graduated from Richardson’s Gators in 2010.

That Richardson was in the discussion at all to be the first quarterback selected represents a shift in the league’s mindset. The NFL has always looked at projectable ‘tools’ as much as they have a college player’s resume leading up to the draft. There are athletic minimums that signify whether a player can make it in the league or not. They do not tell you whether a player will be good, but whether he has the athletic chops to even line up on Sundays.

The pre-draft process was traditionally about crossing prospects off rather than boosting their stock – be it athletically, medically, or intellectually. At least that was the idea.

In reality, every year a few players go from potential mid-round prospects into first-round candidates by wowing evaluators pre-draft. Teams believe that they can coach and cajole athletic traits at certain spots into well-rounded players. But those players typically fall at a handful of positions: pass-rusher, offensive line, wide receiver.

Feet. Hip. Hands. Those are the key to those positions, and coaches believe they can – shock, horror – coach them. They cannot, however, coach length or explosiveness.

Drafting quarterbacks has always been less imaginative. Even the success stories of the raw-prospect-turned-good have been viewed as outliers. The busts always balanced out the hits – and then some. For every Newton and Phil Simms, there was a JaMarcus Russell or Blake Bortles. Betting on a big-armed bomber with little feel for the position was folly in an era where an ageing Tom Brady and Drew Brees continued to lord over the league. Pro-day phenoms consistently turned to busts when they faced complex defenses and snarling pass-rushers.

And then came Mahomes, a revolutionary player who showed there was a new way of doing things. He changed how the game is played and coached, what is asked of the quarterback, the skills needed at the position and how the position is evaluated. And then came Josh Allen, a reckless, inaccurate, sloppy college player who transformed into a reckless, accurate, exhilarating player in the pros.

Now the league has been Mahomesified. Grabbing unorthodox quarterbacks from non-traditional offenses is now the norm. Everyone wants a quarterback who’s more of a creator than a distributor. If you’re fortunate to land a ready-to-go, polished prospect who can do both, like Young, congratulations. Everyone else is swimming in the Allen, Trey Lance, Zach Wilson, Jordan Love waters: Betting that a raw prospect can develop the knowhow to succeed in the NFL long-term. The athleticism and off-script creativity cannot be taught, but perhaps the nuances can be learned. Sometimes they turn into Allen, sometimes they turn into Wilson.

Richardson is the latest on that conveyor belt. He is no different a prospect today than he was when he rolled up in Indianapolis. He remains a flawed thrower who is capable of doing special things. But the confirmation of his extraordinary talent has owners, executives, and fans dreaming. The Allen-Mahomes duo has bred a crop of general managers and scouts with a fear of missing out.

A player who has shown that he has the potential to be special is now a more valuable prospect than the fine-tuned thrower with creative limitations. The pro day darlings are en vogue, as long as you can squint your eyes enough to find the 5% of superstar promise in their college tape. Every team wants to take a shot at selecting Superman, even if he winds up being the Zack Snyder version.