Oh man, the Colts are really gonna start Daniel Jones in Week 1

USA Today

a day ago

Chris Ballard's job is on the line. The general manager of the Indianapolis Colts is in his ninth season as the architect behind the Colts' roster. He has a single playoff win to show for it.
That leaves him with one of the hottest seats among NFL executives this fall. Anything short of a playoff berth could end Ballard's tenure in Indianapolis. After an 17-17 record the last two seasons, it's clear things need to change for the Colts to climb back to the top of the AFC South.
The quarterback ready to bring that change under similarly embattled head coach Shane Steichen? Daniel by-God Jones.
On one hand, this isn't a surprise. Jones seemed to have an inside edge throughout training camp when it came to working with the team's starters. Richardson has been an injury risk throughout his brief NFL career and missed 19 games the last two seasons. He made it five plays into the 2025 preseason before suffering a dislocated finger. When healthy, he's a high variance game-changer in ways that were more bad than good last fall and finished 2024 with a 47 percent completion rate.
On the other hand, this is a surprise because it's Daniel Jones.
The injury concerns that haunt Richardson? Jones missed 16 games between 2021 and 2023 due to neck and knee injuries. The performance issues that threaten to leave a deep offense stuck in neutral? Jones has thrown 10 touchdown passes against 13 interceptions in his last 16 games and was benched for Tommy DeVito -- Tommy DeVito! -- due in equal parts to poor play and concerns that an injury suffered late in a meaningless season could trigger $23 million in guarantees for 2025.
Jones brings a higher floor to the Colts offense than Richardson. He has more playoff wins than Tua Tagovailoa thanks to the 2022 season that saw the New York Giants establish a run-heavy attack that asked Jones to throw the third-shortest average pass distance in the NFL. That worked until it didn't. When head coach Brian Daboll had to turn up the downfield throws as a weakened rushing game left his offense off-schedule Jones' interception rate rose from a league-best 1.1 percent in 2022 to 2.6 over the last two seasons.
That means he's bringing a lower ceiling than Richardson, who plays football like someone dropped a jar of Superballs on a concrete floor. Richardson's offense was predicated on more downfield throws than anyone else in the league. His 12.2 yards per air target were nearly three full yards deeper than second-place Trevor Lawrence on the 2024 NFL leaderboard. When things go right, Richardson is capable of doing things maybe three or four of his peers can do on a given play.
Richardson is a high variance quarterback. The Colts knew this when they made him the fourth overall pick after a stunning rise up draft boards in 2023. Starting Jones over him -- the steadier option in a way that hasn't mattered the last two seasons -- is a shrugging admission that Indianapolis' coaching staff can't fix him, even 2.5 years in to his Colts career. Jones got the Giants to the Divisional Round of the postseason with Saquon Barkley in the backfield. If he can get his new team to nine wins with Jonathan Taylor doing all the work in this group project, it could be enough to save Ballard and Steichen's jobs.
This doesn't mean we've seen the last of Richardson. Jones has been shuffled out of the lineup due to injury and underwhelming play before. But his leash may be longer than expected because what he does well -- checking down for surefire gains and keeping his offense churning -- is so much different than what Richardson does well -- chucking a ball 70 yards off his back foot or putting his head down and trying to run through three linebackers at a time.
Richardson is a glass engine, impressive and impractical, waiting to turn internal combustion into an external one. But he's undoubtedly got more to offer in a league that values gunslinging, mobile quarterbacks more than ever. The Colts, to their credit, at least have the awareness to say "hell, we can't figure him out either." While that's not an official statement, that's what you get when you name Daniel Jones QB1 over the guy you drafted fourth overall less than three years ago.