The final numbers won’t reflect it, but the tape will, and Indianapolis Colts head coach Shane Steichen was very encouraged by Anthony Richardson’s performance against the Lions.
“I thought he played pretty darn well after watching the tape,” said Shane Steichen on Monday.
On the stat sheet, Richardson finished the day 11-for-28 passing for 172 yards with no touchdowns and no interceptions.
But when it comes to the intangible aspects of playing the quarterback position, the elements that can showcase long-term success, Richardson again showed improvement, building upon his performance from a week go in New York.
Throughout the game, even when the situations weren’t conducive for it, Richardson often remained on time and in rhythm as a passer. His command of the offense was on point as well, knowing where to go with the ball, when to push it downfield, and overall making good decisions.
“I thought (Richardson was) really good, just like last week,” Quenton Nelson said via The Athletic. “Maybe even better this week just running and passing. I think he’s doing a great job and just raising his play week to week.”
The issue for the offense was a lot of other factors, which made things more challenging for Richardson and hurt his production.
A number of penalties wiped out explosive plays for the Colts’ offense. There were also some dropped passes and the offensive line didn’t provide Richardson with much help, with Jonathan Taylor averaging just 3.2 yards per carry, which put more of a burden on the passing game, not to mention that Richardson was pressured on 43 percent of his dropbacks, the fifth-highest rate in Week 12.
However, another positive, is through all of the ups and downs going on around him, Richardson remained poised and didn’t let it effect his level of play. He even graded out as PFF’s fifth-highest graded passer in Week 12, for what it’s worth.
At the end of the day, the Colts don’t have a ton of breathing room when it comes to their playoff hopes so every loss is going to hurt quite a bit. Making things worse were all the self-inflicted errors that contributed to the performance.
But while Richardson’s numbers on Sunday may look somewhat similar to what we saw from him early on in the season, this performance compared to those other ones were vastly different.
