We Don’t Do a Great Job Talking About Starting or Sitting Rookie Quarterbacks

The Colts have decided to start Anthony Richardson, which reopened the age-old debate of "starting quarterbacks too soon." Let's talk about it.

The Indianapolis Colts announced that they would be starting Anthony Richardson for the 2023 season, which didn’t come as much of a surprise. While the Colts played it safe and acquired Gardner Minshew – giving them a sort of bridge quarterback – top-five picks at the position tend to start sooner rather than later.

Anthony Richardson debuts against the Buffalo Bills in his first preseason game. Image courtesy Indianapolis Colts.

We tend to think of raw quarterbacks as players who need to sit before they make it out onto the field, and Richardson’s draft profile screamed “unrefined.”

This announcement reignited discourse on whether it was “better” to sit or start quarterbacks, and the same examples populated the conversation – Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes sat; Josh Allen and Cam Newton started. Jalen Hurts sat, Justin Herbert started.

Can Quarterback History Guide the Sit-Start Decision?

Rodgers and Mahomes were behind Pro Bowl – or better – quarterbacks who had just made the playoffs. Maybe they would have started in different circumstances.

And what of the failures? We can’t say with any certainty that quarterbacks who followed either path but failed did so because they either sat or started. Would Tim Tebow have been a better quarterback if he could have spent time on the bench? Was Jake Locker a victim of starting too early, or was it merely injuries? Would Ryan Tannehill’s career arc be different if he had the luxury to sit in Miami?

We are essentially hunting for one kind of signal and ignoring another. It’s not really an acceptable data practice in most areas of life – if we were deciding between watching two movies, we wouldn’t make the choice solely because one of the actors was in absolutely more successful movies.

If we only made those choices based on the sheer number of successes, we’d be inclined to choose Nicolas Cage, who has been in more bad and good movies combined than possibly anyone – over Ryan Gosling, who has been in far fewer successful movies but has a much higher hit rate of critically acclaimed films.

That’s what these quarterback debates do – they count success and ignore the failures. There’s no ability to meaningfully generate a “rate” of success with either approach. There’s another signal mucking up the data, too – quarterbacks who sit are not very good.

We don’t know if Jordan Love had to wait to start because he needed time to develop, because he’s simply not any good or if it’s just because it’s kind of difficult to bench Aaron Rodgers. Any of those three non-mutually exclusive options could be the reason that Love wouldn’t become a starting quarterback until this year.

We can be reasonably confident that Paxton Lynch couldn’t win the gig because of a baseline lack of talent, but it’s harder to say that Geno Smith flamed out with the New York Jets because he wasn’t allowed to sit right away. Certainly, his extensive experience in the league as a backup is a reason he re-emerged in Seattle, but if he had bad coaching in New York, there may not be much sitting behind a veteran can do.

It may even be the case that someone like Carson Wentz could have benefited from sitting. He had a remarkable 2017, but the habits he needed to build to sustain that season weren’t a part of his playstyle in any permanent way. When he suffered setbacks, he reverted to those habits, including a tendency to hold the ball on too long and stare down receivers. We may say the same of Jared Goff.

The truth is that we don’t know. Instead of looking at success, failure and counterfactuals, we can break it down into component parts, which is what the Colts seemingly did.