When the Director General of Indianapolis Colts, Chris Ballard, made the headlines during the Nfl Scouting combines by saying that the team would have an “open competition” in the quarter-tree this season, he raised the question, “what signal the colts do they acquire to compete with Anthony Richardson?”
The answer to this question became official on Wednesday when the team announced the signing of the free agent Daniel Jones. Selected n ° 6 overall by the giants in 2019 NFL draftJones completed 64.1% of its passes for 14,582 yards and 70 affected with 47 interceptions in six seasons with New York. He went 24-44-1 as a starter, but led the giants to a place in the playoff series and a victory over the Vikings during the 2022 season.
After having concluded a one -year -old agreement of $ 14 million with Indianapolis, Jones will try to overthrow Richardson as a starter. Like Jones, Richardson was selected at the start of the project (n ° 4 in total in 2023). And like Jones, Richardson had trouble meeting high expectations. In 15 departures in the past two seasons, he has completed only 50.6% of his passes and has more interceptions (13) than to pass affected (11). However, he added 10 precipitated affected.
“I think that (a quarter competition) is good for the team; I think it’s good for Anthony,” said Ballard during the combination. “We wrote Anthony High knowing that it was going to take time, and we knew that there would be hiccups along the way. I know that we want a finished product at the moment.
But, according to the Sportsline projection model, the Battle of Jones-Richardson should not be a battle at all. The model, which simulates each Nfl Game 10,000 times and ends for a lot of $ 7,000 for $ 100 players on the best rated NFL picks Since its creation, says that the colts have been better with Jones, not Richardson, behind the center.
With Jones, Indianapolis won 7.9 games (compared to 6.5 with Richardson), won AFC South 26.9% of time (against 11.1%) and 35.9% like the playoffs (compared to 15.1%).
Why the difference? According to Stephen Oh, the main data engineer from Sportsline and man behind the model, says that it is simply a question of precision, or rather inaccuracy. Last season, Richardson had the lowest completion rate (47.7%) of any quarter starting from the NFL.
“Practically each quarter-back would be an upgrade on Richardson because he is a smuggler of less than 50%,” said Oh. “Richardson is incredible to perhaps complement 33% of the bullets that should be completed 15% of the time. But it is terrible because passes that should be completed 75% of the time are completed 50%.”
Richardson worked for this offseason with renowned launcher coach Tom House to improve his launching mechanisms.
“He’s really competitive,” says Ballard. “I think that for a six-game section there (last season), we saw really special stuff from him. Now we just have to become coherent.”
