Next man up

 ... is Anthony Richardson, it seems.

It's his turn in the barrel, to put it another way.

It's his turn in the Scrutiny Room under the merciless glare of a single white light, Shane Steichen grilling him like a tuna: Are you ready NOW, AR? Are you? Are you? Are-

OK. So that's getting a wee melodramatic.

Still, the quarterback competition is some kind of on for the Indianapolis Colts, and Richardson gets the first audition after being named the starter for the Horsies' preseason opener at Baltimore tomorrow. Then it'll be Daniel Jones who'll be the next man up, or in the barrel, or being sweated in the box by Det. Pembleton.*

(*Rando reference to the 1990s David Simon vehicle "Homicide: Life On The Street." Best cop show ever and don't waste your breath arguing otherwise.)

And here we pause to try to answer the unanswerable.

Which is, of course, how we got to a place where Anthony Richardson suddenly is fighting for his job with Daniel Jones. Daniel Freaking Jones, for crying out loud.

"You mean the same Daniel Freaking Jones who got run out of New York because he was spectacularly underwhelming as a quarterback?" you're asking now. "The same Daniel Freaking Jones who once was benched for Tyrod Taylor, who in turn got hurt and was replaced by a kid from the neighborhood named Tommy DeVito?"

The very one.

Now the Colts regard him as even-steven with Richardson, which boggles the mind in ways no mind should ever be boggled. Two years ago, after all, the Colts snatched Richardson with the fourth pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, and everyone was declaring him a New Prototype For A New Quarterbacking Age, an absolute platinum-grade athletic freak who would lead the Colts back to glory.

Two short years later, he's battling Daniel Jones for his job. Excuse me, Daniel Freaking Jones.

This after the Colts threw AR into the fire right from the get-go, a horrendously awful decision that has practically ruined the kid and led the franchise to this sad pass. Richardson was, after all, a month shy of 21 when the Colts drafted him. He was just three years out of high school, and he'd started all of 13 college games at Florida. How the Colts braintrust (so-called) thought he was ready to be a starting quarterback in the NFL -- especially for a team that had gone 4-12-1 the season before -- remains a mystery of the age.

Me, I'm thinking magic mushrooms might have been involved.

Anyway, Richardson started, got hurt, started again in 2024, got hurt again. Came back, got benched for 147-year-old Joe Flacco. Replaced Flacco, got hurt again. 

At some point along this bumpy way, he was deemed immature and unready, as if those were startling revelations. Of course he was immature and unready. Well, duh, and all that.

So now he's battling Daniel Jones, words that will always be almost impossible to write no matter how many times we're compelled to write them. It's a desperate franchise's last desperate attempt to save AR (and themselves) from the dreaded B-word -- the word, of course, being "bust."

Decent young man that he is, here's hoping that doesn't happen. Here's also hoping the Colts give up on him, because only then will the decent young man have a shot at proving he's everything the Colts said he was before they got their buttery fingers on him.

Maybe he and Caleb Williams up in Chicago can manage to escape together.  "The Shawshank Redemption" as a buddy film, anyone?