A roll of the dice

 So, then: Anthony Richardson.

Off-the-charts athlete. Leaps tall buildings in a single bound, all that. If the NFL were the Olympic decathlon, the Indianapolis Colts just won gold.

Except ...

Except the NFL is not the Olympic decathlon.

Which means the Colts are asking Richardson to play quarterback.

And no one really knows yet if he can do it. 

At least, not in the National Football League, although the Colts are betting he can. Scratch that: They're praying he can. That especially includes GM Chris Ballard, who's hanging his job and his reputation on Anthony Richardson.

He might have just selected the next great Colts quarterback, the way the Horsies picked Andrew Luck and Peyton Manning and even Bert Jones way back in the day. Or he might have just selected a hell of a free safety.

Truth is, we don't really know, which means the Colts were either very bold to take him at No. 4 or completely reckless. There's the thinnest of lines between the two, and we won't really know which side of it the Colts landed on for awhile yet.

Right now, all we've got to go on is what he did at Florida last fall in his only season as a full-time starter, and the numbers don't blow your hair back. He completed 53.8 percent of his passes for 2,549 yards, 17 touchdowns and nine interceptions. He also rushed for 654 yards and nine more scores -- and, at 6-4 and 244 Adonis-like pounds, he'll be both agile enough and ripped enough to survive behind the Colts' Seven Blocks of Parmesan Cheese O-line.

He flashed enormous promise at times. He also made some of the mistakes a guy makes who's still learning the position. He looked like what he is, a stunningly gifted athlete playing quarterback.

So will he become a quarterback playing quarterback? Patrick Mahomes 2.0, or even Lamar Jackson 2.0?

We shall see. But as last night's first round of the draft proved, these things never go the way you think they're gonna go.

First the Houston Texans won the draft in the first half hour by taking C.J. Stroud with the second pick and trading with Arizona for the third pick so they could take Alabama edge rusher Will Anderson.

Then the draft gurus who kept telling us the running back position is devalued in the modern NFL watched two RBs get taken in the first 12 picks -- Bijan Robinson by the Falcons at No. 8, and Alabama's Jahmyr Gibbs by the Lions at No. 12.

The Bears sat tight and let the Eagles jump them to take Jalen Carter, the peerless edge rusher from Georgia whose draft status was supposedly hurt badly by a couple of errors in judgment, but who still went ninth. O-linemen were popular early. The Patriots may have gotten the steal of the draft by snagging corner Christian Gonzalez with the 17th pick.

Oh, yeah: And Kentucky quarterback Will Levis, who was getting some late run from the gurus as a potential No. 2 pick, fell all the way out of the first round. He'll likely go in the second round tonight.

Once again: You never know.

Which, if you're a Colts fan, means you're saying one of two things this morning:

"Hey, you never know!" is one.

"Omigod, you never know!" is the other.