Tag: anthony richardson 2023 nfl draft

Anthony Richardson shows (and hits) impossible ceiling at his pro day, but where is the floor?

Anthony Richardson literally showed an impossibly high ceiling at his pro day, but there are still questions about the level of the floor.

Before we get into how Florida quarterback Anthony Richardson looked at his Thursday pro day throwing session, it’s important to put it out there once again that we have literally never seen an athlete like this at the position. It’s what makes NFL comparisons nearly impossible.

Those numbers are awesome. But the numbers that give NFL teams fits when trying to figure out how to project Richardson to their league? One year as a starter. 15 interceptions to his 24 touchdown passes in 2022. A 53.8% completion rate in 2022. Richardson is not ready for the NFL as a pure passer’ even his most ardent supporters (consider me one) will cede that even as we talk about the fact that he improved in several pure quarterback categories.

Anthony Richardson’s recent progress should have the NFL seeing him differently

It should surprise nobody that when Richardson let the ball fly deep at his pro day, the stuff was just thermonuclear. Richardson doesn’t just have a plus deep arm; he has one of the most remarkable deep arms I’ve ever seen in a draft prospect.

Richardson had tongues wagging with a high percentage of deep throws; at one point, he hit the top of the stadium and just laughed it off.

Where you want more on the field, and where things show up in bad places at times, is when he has to throw anything but a fastball. Last season, per Pro Football Focus, he completed just 58.0% of his passes from 0-9 air yards for 417 yards, four touchdowns, five interceptions, and a passer rating of 61.6 — his lowest passer rating on any type of throw. His passer rating of 114.6 on throws of 20 or more air yards? That’s the obvious freakish upside showing itself off. But as was the case in-season, Richardson is a thrower with one dominant pitch, and he will need time to develop the off-speed stuff — to throw with timing, touch, and different kinds of functional velocity to different parts of the field. He missed a couple of easy underneath throws at his pro day that spoke to these issues.

“I’ve just been working,” Richardson told NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero and Steve Smith Sr. after he was done throwing. “I was very inconsistent at times throughout the season, so I’m just trying to put that behind me and trying to stay consistent. Inconsistency is not going to work at the next level, so I’ve just been grinding at that. Just trying to perfect my craft, and perfect who I am as a person.

“I put a lot of pressure on myself. I want to be great — I want to be the best in the world. I know I’ll never be perfect, but I try to work toward perfection. If I’m not working toward that, I’ll get in my head a little bit, or I used to, and realize that I can’t control everything. I just have to focus on my job, and everything I can do.”

Smith summarized what NFL teams are going through with this particular evaluation — if it all pans out, and Richardson comes even close to his upside, he has the opportunity to be a quarterback we have only imagined.

As we saw at this pro day, Richardson was able to literalize his impossibly high ceiling by hitting it with a preposterous throw. The extent to which he’ll be able to develop the things that turn rocket-armed projects into pure quarterbacks will be the fascinating part of this entire equation.

Why Florida’s Anthony Richardson is college football’s fastest-rising quarterback

Every year, one college quarterback rises to status as a top-tier draft prospect. Here’s why Florida’s Anthony Richardson is That Guy in 2022.

There are those quarterbacks in every draft class who seem to come out of nowhere to rise to first-round consideration. In 2021, Pitt’s Kenny Pickett threw 42 touchdowns and just seven interceptions — through his first four years combined with the Panthers, he had thrown 39 touchdowns and 25 picks. The past didn’t matter; Pickett’s most recent oeuvre had the Steelers taking him with the 20th overall pick when he would have been a mid-round prospect at best before that.

As we get into the 2022 college football season, we have to turn our eyes to Anthony Richardson of the Florida Gators as the most likely out-of-nowhere prospect who could have NFL scouts freaking out when it’s draft time. A four-star recruit and the fifth-ranked dual-threat quarterback in the country coming out of Eastside High School in Gainesville, Richardson committed to the Gators and spent most of his true freshman and sophomore seasons sitting behind Kyle Trask. He attempted just 66 passes, completing 39 for 559 yards, seven touchdowns, and six interceptions. Richardson was more dynamic as a runner, gaining 462 yards and scoring three touchdowns on 58 carries.

But once Trask left for the NFL, it was hard to know how Richardson would respond to the increased responsibility.

It took one game for that story to write itself. The Gators upset seventh-ranked Utah 29-26 in a game that came down to the wire, and Richardson was the star of the whole thing. He completed 17 of 24 passes for 168 yards and no touchdowns, but he was saving those for the ground game. Richardson ran the ball 11 times for 106 yards and three touchdowns against an utterly overwhelmed Utes defense, and Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham saw it coming — comparing Richardson to Cam Newton, another NCAA late bloomer who did well in the NFL.

“You have to account for the QB in the run game every single down,” Whittingham said the Monday before Saturday’s game. “The guy reportedly has 4.3 speed. At that size, it’s incredible. It’s Cam Newton-ish type of numbers with his physical stature and his ability to run. That’s something that the defensive staff is well aware of and that’s gotta be taken into account in virtually everything you do.

“The quarterback is outstanding. I know there’s not a big body of work, but some people are projecting him as a top-10 pick this coming draft. He’s obviously got a ton of ability. A big kid. 6-4, 240-pounds, and really fast. He’s going to be a handful for us.”

Whittingham said pretty much the same thing after the game. And he was able to confirm Richardson’s track speed.

“He ran for over 100 yards and there were some damaging runs in the first half and the touchdown run in the second. He is going to get his. The guy is like 6’4″ and 240 and runs like a 4.3, so there is no way to keep him bottled up. He did the damage at key points and times in the game and he is a terrific player.”

Richardson had already shown enough running ability to be on any opposing coach’s radar. But it was the ways in which he got things done in the passing game that could have Richardson rocketing up everybody’s boards.