Anthony Richardson Is Staying in Indianapolis as Daniel Jones's Backup

Colts general manager Chris Ballard told reporters on Tuesday that he expects Anthony Richardson to remain with the organization this season, effectively closing out a trade request that had hung over Indianapolis since the offseason. Richardson survived Sunday's roster cutdown and enters the 2026 season as the backup to Daniel Jones.

The resolution is anticlimactic, which is usually how quarterback trade requests end when the requesting player has limited leverage and a contract the acquiring team would have to absorb. Richardson asked out. No deal materialized. Indianapolis kept him. The Colts open the season on September 13 against the Baltimore Ravens with Jones under center.

Why nothing happened

The market for a young quarterback with Richardson's profile is thinner than it looks from the outside. Teams that need a starter want certainty and are willing to pay for it in free agency or the draft. Teams that need a backup want a veteran who can run the existing offense on three days of prep. Richardson is neither, and the compensation Indianapolis would have needed to justify a trade never came close to the compensation the market was willing to offer.

The Colts also had a roster reason to hold. Jones is a competent starter, not an unassailable one, and a team that trades its only high-upside insurance policy in late August is a team betting its entire season on one player staying healthy. Ballard has not historically made that bet.

What it means for the Colts offense

Nothing changes about Indianapolis's Week 1 plan. Jones is the starter, the offense is built around him, and the skill players are being evaluated with him in mind.

That skill group just got healthier. Ballard confirmed Tuesday that Keenan Allen will play in the Week 1 opener against Baltimore, and that the team's hope is Alec Pierce is available as well after Pierce returned to practice following offseason ankle surgery. Pierce has come off the PUP list, which is the procedural step that makes a Week 1 activation possible.

A receiver room with Allen and Pierce both available in Week 1 is a crowded one, and crowded receiver rooms are where fantasy value goes to die. Allen's role is the slot and the intermediate middle of the field, Pierce is the vertical element, and the target distribution behind them is unresolved. Our projections treat the Colts' passing game as a two-man operation with a wide error bar on which two men it is in any given week.

Fantasy fallout

Richardson has no redraft value. A backup quarterback on a team with a healthy starter is not a fantasy asset in any format shallower than a 32-team superflex league, and managers holding him on the expectation of a trade should move on.

In dynasty, the calculus is different but not dramatically better. Richardson's value is entirely tied to an offseason change of scenery, and this news pushes that scenario back a full calendar year. He is a hold at a depressed price and a buy only at a genuinely distressed one.

Jones is the player worth pricing correctly. He enters the season as a low-end QB2 in single-quarterback leagues and a viable streamer against soft secondaries, with the Colts' schedule providing several of those. His fantasy production has historically leaned on rushing volume, and Indianapolis's play-caller has shown willingness to use quarterback designed runs near the goal line. That is where Jones's fantasy floor lives.

The Verdexed model take

Our win-total model has the Colts near the bottom of the AFC South's projected range, and the quarterback room is a meaningful part of why. The model penalizes teams whose backup quarterback projection sits far below their starter projection, because injury-adjusted season simulations are dominated by the games the QB2 has to play. Retaining Richardson narrows that gap slightly relative to a scenario where Indianapolis traded him and rostered a replacement-level third-stringer.

That is a small adjustment, and it does not change the headline: the model still projects Indianapolis as an underdog in the majority of its games and gives the Colts a below-average playoff probability. Richardson's presence is insurance, not upside.

For the opener, the model has Baltimore as a comfortable favorite, and the Colts' offense projects in the bottom third of Week 1 in implied points. That argues against Indianapolis pass catchers in DFS and against Jones as a Week 1 streaming option even in a game where the Colts will likely be throwing to catch up.

What's next

The thing to watch is not Richardson, it is the Colts' first injury report of the season on the Wednesday before the opener. Pierce's designation is the item that matters most for fantasy purposes, because a Pierce absence consolidates targets around Allen and makes him a legitimate flex play in Week 1.

Richardson's situation revisits itself at the trade deadline and again next spring. Neither is a reason to hold a roster spot now. In a league where roster spots are scarce and the waiver wire is deep in September, the correct move on a backup quarterback with no path to the field is the obvious one.

The dynasty read

Dynasty managers are the only group with a real decision to make here, and the correct one depends on roster construction rather than on any new information about Richardson himself. In a shallow superflex league where quarterback scarcity is the dominant force, a former top-five pick sitting behind a bridge starter is worth a bench spot on the chance that a 2027 change of scenery produces a starting job. In a deep single-quarterback league, that same roster spot is better spent on a rookie receiver with a defined role.

The historical comparison set for quarterbacks in Richardson's exact situation, drafted in the top five, benched inside three seasons, and retained rather than traded, is not encouraging. A small number have resurfaced as starters elsewhere. Most have not. The market prices that distribution reasonably well, which is why buying at the current number is not obviously profitable.

What would change the analysis is an injury to Jones. Richardson would step into a defined starting role on a roster with two established veteran receivers, and his rushing profile would make him an immediate top-15 fantasy quarterback on volume alone. That is the scenario the hold is paying for, and it is why the answer in superflex leagues differs from the answer everywhere else.