All hell broke lose when Anthony Richarson decided to bail out in the game against the Houston Texans. The Indianapolis Colts had to bear the brunt of it. After the game, the Colts HC Shane Steichen was asked whether the QB will be the starting in the upcoming matchup against the Vikings and he tried to shrug it off by saying that he’s “evaluating” the situation.

Now, it has become clear that Richarson won’t be starting against the Vikings and his job will go to Joe Flacco, the veteran QB that the Colts acquired this year. This decision, though hinders Richardson’s development, is the right choice in the eyes of the former NFL QB Dan Orlovsky.

“I get it you got to win I understand that you want to win,” Orlovsky said. “It’s going to hinder his development, it absolutely is going to hinder his development.” The second year QB has played 6 games in the season so far and lost half of them. His production seems fine from the outside but when you get into it, you see a problem.

There have been games where he’s thrown three picks (vs Packers) but that’s not the only issue. In his last game against the Houston Texans, he was sacked five times and it’s killing a lot of score-worthy drives. Moreover, there hasn’t been a game where he played from start to finish and completed more than 50% of his passes.

In essence, his development was already slow but it might also be due to a fact that he’s coming off a shoulder injury that he’s been nursing since the last year. But coming back to Orlovsky’s comments on Richardson’s situation, he does believe that the Colts HC benching him for the benefit of the team.

“I do think that it’s hard for him to continue to develop the in-game skills needed to play at a higher level if he’s not playing and I think that the Shane is realizing I got a good enough team like we can go win ball games and right now he believes that Joe is probably better suited to go get that done,” Orlovsky expressed on The Rich Eisen Show.

It’s interesting to see how Anthony Richardson has drawn parallels to Bryce Young, the first overall pick in the 2023 draft class.

Bryce Young in same situation as Anthony Richardson

It’s true to some extent. Since David Tepper took over, the Panthers haven’t had a winning season and to make matters worse, the owner has a habit of changing head coaches as soon as the situation goes south. Imagine how his development as a quarterback might have taken a hit working with 3 head coaches within a season.

The Panthers benched young  for Andy Dalton and there was a glimmer of hope for a while. With Dalton sitting out for a couple of games, Young now has the opportunity to win his starting spot back. But might be too jarring for him at this point. He never really had a mentor to teach him things and that might be one of the reasons why he’s struggling so much.

The Panthers unsurprisingly lost the last game as well and are 1-7 now. They are officially the worse team in the NFL right now and that doesn’t seem to improve anytime soon.