"I'm Going To Grind Until I'm A Hall Of Famer" - Words To Remember If Your Team Passes On Anthony Richardson In The NFL Draft
Icon Sportswire. Getty Images."For Richardson, being a bust isn't an option. Not after his mom worked three jobs at a time to allow him to play football in the first place. Not after he spent his high school years hauling his little brother around town on his bicycle so that he could babysit and go to practice at the same time. Not after he endured injuries and coaching changes and nights where he didn’t have enough to eat.
"Instead, Richardson imagines a future in which he has a bust. 'I'm gonna be in the Hall of Fame one day,' he says. 'I already know it. I'm going to grind until I am a Hall of Famer. I'm going to make sure of it. Just making it to the NFL, that's not enough. I gotta be one of the best to ever do it. That's just how I am.'"
An anonymous AFC coordinator described Anthony Richardson as having a "fucking ham cannon" for a right arm.
Apparently he has one between his legs too, because DAMN. That is one bold proclamation to make before you even play a down in the NFL. Might give you pause on swinging for the fences for Richardson near the top of Thursday night's draft. It's quickly closing in, and as polarizing as he is as a prospect, it's been quiet as hell on the Richardson front of late. Makes it even trickier to figure out where he'll wind up.
This quote might shock you if you only read the headline and take it at face value. However, if you dig deeper on Richardson past that out-of-context, admittedly attention-seizing tidbit, it's a lot like watching his game tape. Your life might be easier by not looking a lot closer and zooming in on all this stuff, so the temptation is to fall on the take that, "He's young, immature, inexperienced, doesn't get it, and will be a bust."
If I were in a draft room and my team needed a quarterback, I'd be pounding the table for this guy for a multitude of reasons. Someone with the Florida quarterback's talent level could easily phone it in, be unreceptive to constructive coaching and criticism, use his immense athletic gifts and ignore the finer points of the quarterback position. Get by on natural skill. Don't be bothered with all those "fundamentals" and "mechanics" and complexities of reading/preparing for an opposing defense.
But nope. With only 13 collegiate starts under his belt, the young man who won't be able to drink a beer till next month already has a good head on his shoulders. Check out his piece from The Players' Tribune if you really think his Hall of Famer statement comes from a place of brashness or repulsive arrogance. Don't think that's the case.
Richardson wants to be great and understands it won't come without tons of work. He's setting the highest bar possible for himself to clear, because he believes he can do it.
Babe Ruth shot-calling your bust in the Hall of Fame has a youthful naïveté to it, yet you can't help but be impressed with Richardson's self-confidence. It doesn't come off as weird, super cocky or off-putting. As opposed to, say, Josh Rosen.
As I tweeted about recently, there was an excellent piece in The Athletic from Ted Nguyen about Richardson working with a private QB coach to fix some of the flaws in his mechanics. I'd say it's working. Look at this motherfucking throw:
Get the absolute fuck out of here.
First of all, the effortlessness with which Richardson uncorks this thing is akin to what the average human would generate for a casual 10-yard toss. Because Richardson is basically an extraterrestrial, when the ball looks like it's going to drop on a "natural" trajectory after about 25ish yards, it doesn't. It's as if the video glitches or something…and that piss missile has an additional 30 yards of tail on it before it hits the wide receiver in stride.
Seriously though, Richardson recently referred to himself as an alien, via another excellent feature from NFL Media's Cameron Wolfe — and reiterated that he's heard the noise about his shortcomings:
"As a player, I'm not human. I'm an alien…I don't think I can be compared to anybody. As a person, I'm normal -- just a fun-loving guy who likes to make people smile.
"[…] Nobody wants a quarterback with a 53 percent completion percentage. I don't want to be that guy either. I know I have to get better…But I promise, I will work relentlessly to improve. And I will improve. All you need to do is watch the tape to know my best is still yet to come."
Yeah. Anyone who box score scouts Anthony Richardson ain't doing it right.
Then, you know, he runs a 4.43 40, and has…Not good. Not great. Elite pocket movement. Already. Through 13 starts.
If you look at those numbers and come at me with, "WELL HE USED HIS ATHLETIC ABILITY TO TAKE OFF AND SCRAMBLE ALL THE TIME" you are clowning yourself. You have not watched Richardson anywhere near closely enough.
Richardson's intermediate accuracy in 2022 was almost to NFL standards without the immense mechanical cleanup he obviously needs. His deep accuracy already is at the level of a top professional. And honestly, his throws at or behind the line of scrimmage aren't that far off from the likes of Josh Allen and — wait for it — Tua Tagovailoa. If interested in learning more about all that, read here:
Point being, Richardson really only needs to clean up his precision on that 1-to-9-yard throwing range — and still has room for improvement in all other areas of throwing. You're telling me he absolutely can't make any sort of progress and is dead in the water as an NFL player already?? OK. Go nuts with that take. All I know is, from the sounds of it, he won't fail from a lack of trying.
Selfishly I want to see Richardson flourish, because I've been stumping for this guy for months now. If it means he falls in the draft, so be it. He'll likely be going to a better situation in that scenario.
For someone who initially laughed out loud when Richardson declared for the draft because it seemed ridiculous, I've come a long way. I wanted to go into watching him and find a whole lot of ugly that suggested he had "bust" written all over him. Sorry to the surface-level judges of Richardson. It ain't there.
Anthony Richardson is QB1 over weapons merchant CJ Stroud, soft-spoken, pint-sized Bryce Young and weird Will Levis, who has more experience but more glaring mechanical issues and a fraction of Richardson's awareness in the pocket.
Can't wait to see where Richardson lands. Anywhere but Baltimore to replace Lamar Jackson! Please!
TUNE IN FOR THE EN EFF EL DRAFT SHOW BAY-BEEEEEEE.
Twitter @MattFitz_gerald/TikTok