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I get that Richardson is the "It Girl" (ancient reference, no offense intended) right now and is likely to be a high first-round pick. I look at his stats at Florida and see nothing, but his name has been coming up so much lately that there has to be something behind it.
Career, though, 54.7% completions, 24/15 ratio on 393 career passing attempts. Runs well. Not a Hurts/Lance/Fields type where that's his first thought, but he's elusive and fast. Perfect size for the position. Strong arm.
It's all projection, though. I read articles years ago that suggested the one stat from college that evaluators found most useful was number of starts against power-five opponents. So maybe if Richardson hadn't declared early, you'd see Heisman-level performance in 2023.
Do you bank a franchise on that? He needs to play, not watch.
Here's a list of drafted quarterbacks with less than 400 career passing attempts at power-five universities since 1998:
2016: Cardale Jones (4th round)
2011: Cam Newton (1st overall)
2004: Adrian McPherson (5th round)
2004: Matt Cassel (7th round)
2003: Drew Henson (6th round)
2003: Gibran Hamdan (7th round)
2002: Randy Fasani (5th round)
2001: A.J. Feeley (5th round)
2001: Michael Vick (1st overall)
Trey Lance (3rd overall, 2021) had less than 400 career attempts at an FCS school.
So this isn't unprecedented by any means. In fact, while Lance and Newton played extremely well in college, Vick's college numbers look a lot like Richardson's.
Someone's going to invest in Richardson. High risk, high potential reward. If you think you're close to winning now, though, seems like a bad idea to use a top pick on someone who won't contribute as a rookie.
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