Why would a beat reporter list four quarterbacks as trade candidates three days before cutdowns, and why would one of them be a guy who supposedly already has his answer? Benjamin Allbright reported Aug. 27 that Anthony Richardson was getting calls “to varying degrees of interest” right alongside Tua Tagovailoa, Dillon Gabriel, and J.J. McCarthy — a lineup of quarterbacks nobody expects to start Week 1 anywhere. Being in that company isn’t a compliment. It’s a market telling you exactly where it has Richardson priced.
https://twitter.com/AllbrightNFL/status/2093061817442726002
Some of this is old news by now — we covered when the trade request first went nowhere back in the spring, when Richardson asked out and the Colts said nothing back. Even then, GM Chris Ballard had already conceded the calls were coming without producing anything: “We’ve had some calls, but nothing’s come to fruition at this time. So at this point he’s still an Indianapolis Colt.” That’s not a denial. That’s a market report, and four months later, Allbright’s reporting says the same phones are still ringing and still hanging up empty. The plain answer underneath both is that nobody’s offered anything close to what the Colts think a former No. 4 overall pick is worth, so Richardson stays on the roster by default, backing up Daniel Jones instead of unseating him.
The part that actually explains why: an Anthony Richardson trade in 2026 was never going to happen at a discount, and nobody’s offered full price for a former No. 4 overall pick who already lost the starting job to Daniel Jones and needed a strong preseason finale just to hold off a rookie for the backup role behind him. The Colts, Anthony Richardson, and Daniel Jones are stuck in a three-way arrangement none of them really chose (that part is not really in dispute), and every team that called did the math on Richardson’s trade value and walked.
Assistant GM Ed Dodds tried to frame the holding pattern as loyalty. “I think you take care of your own team first,” he said in mid-August. “We want to have three (QBs) that can play. So, if he’s one of them, he’s gonna be here.” I don’t buy the framing, and I think most people paying attention shouldn’t either. Dodds is describing a quarterback room, but the sentence he’s actually building is a defense of the pick. Protecting Richardson’s development stopped being the operative goal months ago; protecting the sunk cost of a top-five selection is what’s left, and dressing it up as patience in a press conference doesn’t change what it is. Indianapolis spent the fourth pick in a draft on Richardson, and until somebody offers value that makes that swing look justified in hindsight, “we want him here” and “we can’t get equal value back” are the same policy wearing different clothes.
Richardson himself has mostly declined to fight about it in public (smart, if you assume the calls dry up the moment you make yourself a distraction). “So I’m not necessarily sure what’s going on with that, but I’m just here right now,” he told reporters, framing his focus as performance rather than leverage. That’s the posture of a guy who’d rather win the job in front of him than keep talking about the one he might not get traded into.
And he did win it. The Riley Leonard QB2 competition that OC Jim Bob Cooter called “neck and neck” back in camp resolved in Saturday’s preseason finale, a 25-16 loss to Detroit that closed the Colts’ preseason winless. Richardson went 7-of-10 for 80 yards in relief; Leonard went 3-of-7 for 48 with an interception. Across the full preseason, Richardson finished 21-of-33 for 249 yards to Leonard’s 20-of-42 for 199. It wasn’t especially close by the end.
None of that touches the question hanging over today, which is the Colts’ 53-man roster quarterbacks situation at tonight’s 6 p.m. cutdown deadline. Ballard has said his intent is to carry all three (Jones, Richardson, and Leonard), an unusual amount of quarterback for one roster, and about as clear a signal as a front office can send that it isn’t finished evaluating any of them. Jones is the entrenched starter now, the guy who took the job for good during Daniel Jones’ recovery from that Achilles injury last season, which is exactly why Richardson isn’t fighting for snaps anymore. He’s fighting for a role, then presumably a trade partner, in that order.
I think the trade still happens eventually, just not on the timeline anyone in Indianapolis wants to admit out loud. A quarterback healthy enough to just outplay his closest competition for a backup job, still young for the position, doesn’t stay unwanted forever. Teams that passed in August with a full roster and no urgent need will call again the moment somebody’s starter gets hurt in October. What won’t happen is a deal before tonight’s deadline, and probably not before the trade deadline either, because Ballard has no reason to sell Richardson at a discount when the alternative costs him nothing but a roster spot he was filling anyway.
Watch the cutdown numbers when they land this evening, and watch what Indianapolis does with that third quarterback spot once real Week 1 usage tells us whether Jones’ surgically repaired Achilles holds up under a live pass rush. That’s where this actually gets decided, not in another press conference where somebody says a version of “he’s still here” and means something else by it. For the rest of our NFL coverage as roster cutdowns reshape depth charts around the league, we’ll have it covered.
