Richardson-Taylor backfield can save a young quarterback from himself

INDIANAPOLIS — Laiatu Latu had just ripped the ball out of Caleb Williams’ hands to create a short field in the fourth quarter as the Colts defended a slim lead, and Shane Steichen smelled blood in the water.

A coach who is usually looking for explosive passing plays was willing to choose a simple but subtle play. It was a running play between the tackles. But it wasn’t just any running play.

This was a reverse veer, with Jonathan Taylor running sideways across his quarterback’s face. As Bears defenders followed the day’s 110-yard star, Anthony Richardson pulled the ball and ran away behind a pulling Quenton Nelson and blocks from Ashton Dulin and Michael Pittman Jr. to whiz past the first-down marker and rumble inside the 2 down.

Three plays later, Richardson passed to Taylor, who scored the game-winning goal in a 21-16 win over the Bears at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Then the NFL’s youngest starting quarterback punched the air.

“It feels good,” Richardson said with a smile, “just to finish with the team.”

Richardson experienced something he’d never experienced before: winning an NFL game while finishing healthy. It’s his seventh career start and his third win, but the first in which he didn’t suffer an injury that forced him into the trainer’s room instead of celebrating with his teammates.

Those visions, and the months of pain they caused, left the Colts in a game-crippling situation last week when they suffered an ugly 16-10 loss to the Packers. Although Richardson finished the game third in the NFL with 9.3 yards per carry, the Colts called just one designed run for him, despite him having 37 dropbacks. The result was three interceptions and Taylor being benched for the entire fourth quarter.

That wasn’t what the Colts promised when Steichen compared Richardson’s running game to Steph Curry’s three-point shot. But they could still feel the heavy blows over Richardson’s surgically treated shoulder from the season opener, prompting them to send clips to the league and ask for help.

“We don’t want him touched,” Taylor said, “but that’s one of his specialties.”

On Sunday against the Bears, the Colts may have found a formula for survival:

It starts with numbers 28 and 5 in the backfield.

This is the element that has been in the back of their minds all these months and that they pushed aside for a week in Green Bay when a young team lost track of what it wanted to be.

INSIDER: 10 thoughts from the Colts on Anthony Richardson, Jonathan Taylor and a narrow win over the Bears

“I talked a little earlier in the offseason about how dangerous it can be when Jonathan Taylor and Anthony Richardson understand the defensive end so well,” offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter said this week. “One of them has it and the other one doesn’t, and how tough that is on the defense.”

The Colts called this read option play on the first third-and-short of the game, when the defensive end froze, Richardson passed the ball, and Taylor easily ran five yards.

The NFL has never seen a backfield like this, with two players weighing at least 225 pounds who can each run a 40-yard dash in under 4.4 seconds. These two players have individually lit up Lucas Oil Stadium before: Taylor with the 1,811 yards he ran for in 2021 to win the NFL rushing title, and Richardson with the runs and leaps that made him the most athletic quarterback prospect in NFL Scouting Combine history.

Plus, the NFL has never seen a quarterback as polarizing as Richardson, from his athletic potential to his lack of experience and accuracy.

Maybe one extreme can save the other. Maybe this two-headed ground game can be the steadying hand on the rollercoaster ride that is the entire Richardson experience.

“We know our backfield is deadly,” Richardson said. “The passing game wasn’t necessarily there. I couldn’t find a good rhythm, but I still had my legs, so Shane ramped it up and we just ran the ball.”

And now two interchangeable ball carriers with a unique vision begin to play.

Take Taylor’s 29-yard touchdown run in the second quarter. The Colts were in high form, and when Richardson took the ball and turned to find Taylor, he yelled that the nickelback was blitzing. So Taylor turned an inside run into one that he bounced to the right, too long for the nickelback or anyone else to catch.

“I told him, ‘Listen: At the end of the day, it’s just you and me back there,'” Taylor said. “‘I’ve got your back. Let me know if you see anything and I’ll let you know, too.'”

On Sunday at Lucas Oil Stadium, Richardson showed off all of his extremes. He showed off his arm strength on a 44-yard deep ball to Alec Pierce, his graceful running on the inverted veer, the unpredictability of his passes with completely open misplaced passes to Taylor and Josh Downs, and his heroic play on the interception in triple coverage in the end zone.

Richardson finished with statistics that would be a loss for a quarterback in this passing league: 10 of 20, 167 yards, no touchdowns, two interceptions and a rating of 39.0.

But the Colts won despite everything because they found a formula that allowed them to create their version of complementary football:

Run to score. Force the other quarterback to face the pass rush and gain some short fields. And when the defense is gasping for air, make them choose between Taylor and Richardson and feel the dagger right in the chest.

“I think if we get it going well,” said Steichen, “then of course we have to stick with it.”

That’s simply who Richardson is as a passer at this early stage of his career, as he has a 55% success rate in seven career starts. History also suggests who he will be this season, as the passers who have improved their accuracy over the years, like Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts, have done so over the course of multiple seasons.

What gave both players the time they needed, however, was a running game that brought success even without those underdeveloped arms. Allen ran for at least eight touchdowns in each of his first three seasons, and Hurts ran for 56 first downs with his legs in his first year with Steichen as offensive coordinator.

Richardson finished the game with eight carries for 24 yards, although he had five carries for 28 yards before kneeling. It’s a low-volume day that still put the Bears under pressure in the red zone, a part of the field where not every yard is equal.

Combined with Taylor’s 110 yards and two touchdowns and Trey Sermon’s 16 yards and a touchdown, that trick was enough to win a game the Colts desperately needed to win.

MORE: Chasing Tim Tebow, idolizing Tom Brady, fighting fire: Making of Colts QB Anthony Richardson

That won’t be enough against more powerful attacks or in higher stakes games. Not until the passing game catches up. And nobody knows that better than the player who made the passes.

“I just have to calm down and just let the ball roll,” Richardson said. “I just have to give myself time and give myself some rest. I’m so hard on myself when I miss passes out there because I’m like, ‘Man, I don’t want to miss a pass.’

“…It’s like, ‘Oh my God, it’s wide open. Let me give him the ball.’ And I just get too excited and just miss. So I just have to let it go and just give him the ball.”

But for now, it may be enough to turn a frown into a smile for a young quarterback still learning the game. For that quarterback, every result is like a referendum on whether he’s doing what he was put on this earth to do.

“This is the first of many,” Richardson told the team in the locker room after the game. “Kudos to the defense for sticking with us and playing hard. We appreciate that. O-line, great blocking by JT. Trey, good job running into the box.”

“Hey, I’m going to perform better for you guys. I’ve got you all under control.”

Contact Nate Atkins at [email protected]. Follow him on X @NateAtkins_.

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