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.
Florida QB Anthony Richardson at the 2023 NFL Combine:
Height: 6'4 1/4" (taller than George Kittle)
Weight: 244 lbs (heavier than Haason Reddick)
Hand: 10 1/2" (bigger than DeAndre Hopkins)
Vert: 40.5” (higher than Davante Adams)
Broad jump: 10’9” (longer than Odell Beckham Jr)— NFL Research (@NFLResearch) March 4, 2023
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.
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.
Anthony Richardson hit the damn roof at Florida's pro day pic.twitter.com/VH9PuhxhiW
— CJ Fogler AKA Perc70 #BlackLivesMatter (@cjzero) March 30, 2023
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.
Great summation by @SteveSmithSr89 here of Anthony Richardson as a prospect. “This is an investment and no one wants to be known as the person who passed on Tesla or Amazon.” But he also adds there’s the consideration of time and cost that it could possibly take to develop… pic.twitter.com/t81lRdhDzS
— Sheena Quick (@Sheena_Marie3) March 30, 2023
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.
