The Hope and the Promise of Anthony Richardson

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A couple of years ago when I was analyzing whether Kyle Trask could take a quantum leap from his 2019 performance into the upper echelon of SEC QBs in 2020, I didn’t think it was likely.

That was because Trask completed 66.9 percent of his throws in 2019, a number so high that he probably wasn’t going to squeeze a lot more out of just being more accurate. Instead, if he was going to improve drastically, he was going to have to throw the ball downfield more often and more successfully.

Trask actually improved both ways, upping his completion percentage to 68.9 percent, but also improving his yards per attempt by 1.5 from 8.3 to 9.8. The result was that Trask put up a season that can be compared with some of the best in Gators QB history, and set him up as an early-round draft pick in the NFL.

I bring this up now because any analysis of Anthony Richardson is almost the complete opposite.

Richardson averaged 8.3 yards per attempt last season, but he did so on a 59.4 percent completion rate. While we do need to keep in mind that any analysis of Richardson is a limited sample size (64 attempts), it is meaningful that he has room to grow just by improving his accuracy.

It’s also worth noting that his completion percentage and his QB rating of 144.1 compares closely to Feleipe Franks back in 2018 (58.4%, 143.4). Even if he just improves as Franks did through the air, Richardson becomes a major weapon because of what he can do on the ground.

It also means that Richardson has a path to a Burrow-like leap. Burrow elevated his completion percentage from 57.8 to 76.3 and his yards per attempt from 7.6 to 10.8 from 2018 and 2019.

I’m doubtful that Richardson will ever be that accurate, but he doesn’t really have to be to be a star. He just has to be four or five percentage points better than he was in 2021.

And as we’ll see below, that seems eminently doable given his skill set and what he’s already shown on the field thus far.

On the Ground

Editor’s note: Most of the stats in this article were compiled from www.secstatcat.com.

One of the prevailing images in every Gator fans’ mind from the 2021 season is Richardson breaking tackles, then outrunning everybody on USF’s team on the way to a 75-yard TD. The elation of having a QB with that sort of ability was immediately muted as AR pulled up grabbing his hamstring right at the end.

That play seemed to exemplify the 2021 Gators, who could tantalize you with their potential just before bringing you back down to earth when something (usually self-inflicted) went against them. In this case, it wasn’t self-inflicted, but the injury to Richardson underscored the fragility of the position but also the promise that he brings in that portion of the game.

Emory Jones is considered a very good running QB. When he was efficient in that part of his game, Florida won in 2021. He can’t hold a candle to Anthony Richardson, and it isn’t just the long runs.

The above chart shows that Richardson averaged significantly more per rush, had virtually identical success rates and negative run percentages, while getting 7-plus yards on 29.3 percent of his carries compared to 26.6 percent for Jones.

Much of the difference in the per-attempt average is owed to the two big runs against FAU and USF, but that also is a disservice to Richardson for two reasons. First, he either got a first down or put the Gators ahead of the sticks more often than Jones did. Second,  even if you eliminate the 73-yard run vs. FAU and the 80-yard run vs. USF, Richardson averaged 5.5 yards per rush, or exactly the same as Jones.

This isn’t new for Richardson, who ran for more than 1,600 yards in high school at a 6.5 yards per attempt clip. He really burst on the scene with a 95 carry, 924 yard season his junior year (9.7 yards per rush) before only playing six games due to injury his senior year and only getting 33 carries.

And that perhaps is the biggest rub for Richardson and the running game. He does it so well that it is tantalizing to continually put the ball in his hands on the ground. But after a 2021 where he struggled to stay healthy, Billy Napier might be wise to only run him when absolutely necessary to keep him on the field.

Through the Air

This is an area that you expect Richardson to have plenty of development to do, and you would be right. But I have to say that after looking at the stats and the film, I’m more excited about Richardson’s potential than I was coming into this piece.

The first thing I like to do to see where a player might cap out is look at their high school stats. In this case, it’s a mixed bag for Richardson. His shortened 6-game senior season saw him complete 64.5 percent of his throws for 11.3 yards per attempt – elite numbers, but only 124 attempts.

But his three prior seasons (399 attempts) saw him complete just 49.6 percent of his throws for 8.1 yards per attempt.

So the question clearly is whether the leap that he made from 2018 to 2019 is real, and whether he’s going to be a guy who completes 65 percent of his throws at Florida? Or is he going to struggle to keep it above 60 percent for his career?

I think there are good reasons to believe he’s going to be the former rather than the latter.

The first reason is that he was at 59.4 percent in his first season with meaningful snaps, all while never knowing when he would be called upon. Indeed, there were games like Kentucky where he threw one pass and then games like LSU where he came in for an ineffective Jones and threw 19 times.

The second reason is where Richardson was effective in 2021, and perhaps more importantly, where he was not.

To look at this, I compared the success rates of Richardson and Jones in 2021 with Kyle Trask from his 2020 season. Success rate is exactly what it sounds like: was the play a success. For pass plays, that means a 9-yard gain on third-and-12 is unsuccessful whereas that same 9-yard gain on first down is very successful.

By this metric, you can see why Kyle Trask was so good in 2020, as the only place he was below 50 percent was throws behind the line of scrimmage. He was better than Jones at all distances and better than Richardson deep, but they were both equally effective close to the line.

Emory Jones actually wasn’t that bad at intermediate distances. But the lack of success going deep (26%, oof) meant that defenses could creep up. That’s part of the reason that Jones threw 7 of his 13 interceptions at the 11-20 yard depth.

The other thing you can take from this plot is that Richardson was actually equivalent to Trask on short throws. This is something that definitely shows up on film as the vast majority of the time, AR was throwing into single coverage. That’s an indication he is reading the defense rather than just throwing to a predetermined spot.

It was only when going downfield that Richardson’s performance fell off in comparison to Trask. On throws that traveled 20+ yards, Richardson (36% SR) was better than Jones (26%), but worse than Trask (52%). But one thing you can’t say is that it was for a lack of trying.

Here we can see attempt frequency versus distance from the line of scrimmage. What we see is that Trask in 2020 and Jones last season threw deep (20+ yards) at similar clips. But Richardson went deep nearly double the amount that Jones did and 8 percent more often than Trask.

I actually think this is good news. Richardson was going downfield so often that you would expect his efficiency to fall off. If he can become more judicious in taking what the defense gives him, his success rate should go up as his overall attempt frequency comes down.

Another way to look at it is that Richardson has shown a willingness to go deep and it will be up to Napier and Co. to dial down his agressiveness. You’d much rather have that than having to try to coax someone into going for the kill.

There’s one other thing that gives me confidence that Richardson will improve significantly, and that’s the distribution of his success depending on the area of the field he was throwing to in 2021.

To me, this is a really unusual chart. Typically, you think of right handed QBs having more success when they throw to their right. That’s certainly what we saw from Kyle Trask in 2020 as he had a 36 percent success rate deep-left, 58 percent deep-middle and 61 percent deep-right.

But Richardson’s numbers are almost flipped.

He has a 67 percent success rate (4-6, 188 yds) going left. He was also pretty successful going left at both the 0-10 yard distance and the 11-20 yard distance as well (12-18, 161 yds). That fell off considerably on throws to the right, both deep (1-7, 33 yds) and at the 11-20 yard distance (1-5, 22 yds).

But the fact that his success rate (64%) and his overall stats (7-9, 49 yards) jump at the 0-10 yard distance to the right suggests to me that we’re seeing an artifact of sample size. That matches what is observed in the film where Richardson may not always deliver the ball perfectly on-target, but it almost always is going to the right man.

One thing you do see is that Richardson often threw the ball inaccurately when he was pressured. Just like a lot of QBs when their offensive lines get beat, Richardson turned into a mortal under duress. As he gets more time behind center, he’s going to learn to check the ball down in those situations, stay ahead of the sticks and I suspect that the numbers across the board will improve.

Film Study

Why am so confident that Richardson will “get it?” This play exemplifies where that confidence comes from.

This is really subtle, but in a way that I think is really significant. The first thing is that when Nay’Quan Wright goes in motion, defensive back Sage Ryan (#15) follows him. This tells Richardson it is going to be man-to-man coverage on the outside.

The slant to Justin Shorter will be open, but the possibility exists that the LSU linebacker (Damone Clark, #18, highlighted) will drop into the throwing zone. Most young QBs lock onto their primary receiver, but look at how Richardson stares at Clark until he moves out of the way, then delivers a strike to Shorter.

This requires almost no physical gifts. Moving the linebacker with his eyes opens up the throw on a play that just about everyone figured would be a QB power (myself included). For a team that struggled to score in the red zone when Emory Jones was at the helm, this was really easy. And it was easy because Richardson didn’t give away where he was going with the ball, or hesitate once he made the decision to throw it.

Richardson was clearly overmatched against Georgia. He turned the ball over repeatedly and handed the game to the Bulldogs late in the first half with a fumble and two interceptions. But ironically, it’s actually one of those interceptions that I think proves he is going to improve quickly.

We’ll get to the interception, but first we need to look at a play from earlier in the game. On third-and-short, Georgia linebacker Quay Walker (#7) blitzes off the edge. The play was designed to go to the left, the line slides that way to block. That usually means that Richardson is responsible for recognizing Walker on the outside.

As Walker is closing in, you can see the Gators wide receiver come open in the area vacated by Walker with plenty of space to run. Instead, Richardson keeps looking left where the coverage is solid and has to throw the ball away.

This requires some quick decision-making. The safety in the middle of the field is heading over to cover the area vacated by Walker. A late throw turns into a pick. But this isn’t just the vanilla defense that LSU was playing and it tricked Richardson.

But that’s what you get from a player who hasn’t played very much. In the exact same game, right after his fumble had cost the Gators seven points and put them down 10, Richardson faced a similar situation.

Here the “blitz” is coming from the middle linebackers, Nakobe Dean (#17) and Channing Tindall (#41). They also stunt, which makes it difficult for the offensive line to pick up. Richardson sees the “blitz” and throws to the area where those two linebackers would be had they not blitzed.

I have “blitz” in quotations for a reason. Notice that Georgia only rushes four players on the play. That is where the problem comes in, as Richardson does not see defensive end Travon Walker (#44) drop into the zone vacated by Dean and Tindall.

Walker is the player who tips the pass that leads to the interception. Had Walker rushed, this would have been an easy completion against a blitz. The fact that he dropped into the zone is a miss by Richardson, but one that is missed by a lot of QBs with a lot more on-field experience.

Perhaps more than that, it is a course correction to the play earlier where Richardson felt the rusher coming free from the edge (and drifted away from it), but didn’t find the open man in the vacated space. When we talk about getting a player out on the field to gain experience, this is the kind of thing we are talking about. It’s also why having Richardson make his first start against Georgia was so unfair given his limited reps throughout the season up to that point and the advanced concepts the Bulldogs threw at him.

Emory Jones wasn’t going to do any better (he was fooled by the same zone blitz in the second half, in fact). And while Richardson’s performance against the Bulldogs was certainly a disappointment given his superior performances earlier in the year, he was the Gators only hope to win that game.

But amidst the disappointment at the result, the fact that we can see Richardson making real-time adjustments against the eventual National Champions is a good data point, not a bad one. He has a ways to go, but he’s going to be a way different QB after he has 300 throws under his belt than he was in this one with extremely limited experience.

Takeaway

I watched every snap of the LSU and Georgia games with Richardson under center to try and get an idea of where he is in his development. I’ve tried to summarize it a bit above – both positive and negative – but I’m not sure it really does it justice.

I say that because after watching both of those games, I come away more sure that Anthony Richardson isn’t just going to be above average or a game manager. He has a chance to be truly special.

In particular my mind goes to the LSU game. Richardson played almost the entire second half, with very little margin for error. And I didn’t see one throw that entire half where he threw into double coverage. To be sure, he threw the interception that essentially ended the game, but even if you watch that throw and the way the play developed, he threw to the correct guy. He just couldn’t get enough on it because of the pressure to get it all the way there.

Richardson’s skill set also makes being a QB easier. Multiple times he was able to outrun defensive backs, which means the defense has to respect his ability as a runner. That is going to mean a large percentage of teams have to bring up a safety in run support, which makes reading where there is single coverage much easier.

Richardson has shown he can diagnose those sorts of defenses.

The next step is a defense like Georgia. The Bulldogs had the athletes up-front to where they didn’t have to bring the safety up. They also spent a lot of time sitting in zones, daring Richardson to beat them with precise throws in the 10-20 yard range. As I showed in the charts above, that is a weakness.

But that’s a correctable weakness. It’s also only likely to be a huge issue against teams that can beat Florida up-front and put pressure on Richardson without having to bring an extra man. The expectation is that will be a rarer occurrence with Billy Napier, Rob Sale and Darnell Stapleton in charge of the Gators offensive line.

Maybe that’s viewing this thing through orange and blue colored glasses, but I come away from looking into Richardson’s play more excited for 2022 than I thought I would be.

The reason Dan Mullen is gone is multifaceted. But one big reason is that, as Gator Country’s David Wunderlich has pointed out, he just didn’t leave himself any margin for error. One way to increase that margin for error is to have a transcendent player at QB, but when Mullen refused to truly find out if Richardson was that player until the Georgia game, it sealed his fate.

We all just saw what happened at Clemson last year without a Deshaun Watson or Trevor Lawrence at QB, and in some ways at Ohio State without Justin Fields. Those teams were still pretty good last year, but there’s a reason they both took a step back.

That’s not to say that I expect Florida to be competing for championships next year or for Richardson to bring home a Heisman in 2022. He’s still an incredibly raw prospect who is going to need firm direction and on-field experience to blossom.

But if you told me the Gators will be in the hunt in 2023 for the playoff, two things have to be true. As much as I rant and rave about bump class recruiting, that chase will be facilitated by development of players recruited by Dan Mullen in 2020 and 2021 with a few key additions from the 2022 and 2023 classes. And second, that chase will be led by an elite player at the QB position.

Richardson has a chance to be just that.