How Colts QB Anthony Richardson fell in love with football and embraced his role within it

Sep. 6—INDIANAPOLIS — The first time Anthony Richardson stepped on an NFL field, he paused to take stock of his surroundings.

The Indianapolis Colts rookie quarterback estimates he spent 30 minutes walking around the perimeter of the field at the Buffalo Bills' Highmark Stadium in early August.

As he roamed the empty stadium alone with his thoughts, the 21-year-old reflected on the journey that brought him to this moment.

The joy Richardson feels for football is one of the most recognizable things about him.

At the end of his pro day workout in March, he punctuated the proceedings with a beautiful deep ball followed by a celebratory standing backflip.

The spontaneous outbursts have lost some flair since then, but Richardson still smiles, dances and high-fives teammates before, during and after every practice.

His love of the game is reminiscent of a kid on a playground. It's authentic. It's endearing.

And it's rooted in the often difficult journey that made Richardson the fourth overall pick in April's NFL Draft and the new face of the franchise in Indianapolis.

"When I couldn't buy any clothes — my mom couldn't get me any clothes — football has given me clothes," Richardson said. "When I couldn't eat, I was eating at practice. We had a snack room in high school, and I used to be in the snack room eating snacks because I didn't have any food at home.

"So all the things that football has given me — I appreciate this game, and I'm thankful for it. And just the connections I've made through it, just everything that it's given me, that's why I love this game and I appreciate it. I feel like it's about having fun on the field, but I feel like I view the game differently than other people because of how much it's given me, what it's given me."

----The move that changed Richardson's life happened when he was just 10 years old.

His mother, LaShawnda Cleare — herself a young 27 at the time — worried about increasing violence and gang activity in their Miami, Florida, neighborhood and moved her small family — including Richardson's younger brother, Corey Carter — to Gainesville.

The problems they faced in their new home are all too common for too many American families.

Cleare worked multiple jobs to make ends meet and volunteered at every school function to make certain she was doing everything possible to provide for her boys.

"It was hard," she told NFL.com prior to the draft. "I struggled. We didn't have much. I had to work several jobs — a lot of hours without much sleep — to pay for clothes, food, rent and bills.

"I hope people don't judge me. I did the best I could. I wanted my kids to be better than me and have a much better life. I didn't see it as a sacrifice."

Richardson did, and it motivated him to find maturity beyond his years.

He became a father figure to Carter, allowing the youngster to ride on the handlebars of his bike whenever they made the rounds through town.

The pair became inseparable.

And Richardson took on some traditional parental responsibilities. He made sure Carter got to school on time. He tried to keep Carter out of trouble. He even cooked several meals.

"When I was in sixth or seventh grade, I had to help my mom make a few meals because she couldn't move because she had surgery just from working too hard," Richardson said. "But it kind of forced me to experiment with certain things. I used to always make my brother pancakes. That was one thing I loved to make for him.

"But that's my Mini Me. I love him, and I'm glad he's here (in Indianapolis) with me. He also pushes me to be the best, too."

Carter's starting his football career at Westfield this fall, and Richardson is reliving some of his own early years.

He became a high school star in Gainesville, but it quickly became apparent he didn't know how to play the big-time recruiting game.

While most quarterbacks in his recruiting class had more than two dozen major offers, Richardson had less than half that total.

His family didn't have the money to send him to Div. I camps or big-time competitions like the Elite 11 and its many qualifiers.

Richardson's prodigious athletic talent — on full display in February during the NFL Scouting Combine — made up for much of the deficit. And, as has always been the case, he made the most of the cards he was dealt.

The recruiting process was fairly simple. He made it clear he didn't want to play any position other than quarterback — flatly rejecting one Southeastern Conference school that insisted on a position change — and landed close to home at the University of Florida.

----Richardson understands the enormity of the responsibility being placed on his shoulders.

Before he even takes his first competitive NFL snap Sunday against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Lucas Oil Stadium, he's already part of a quarterback lineage that includes Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck.

Those two No. 1 overall picks still cast shadows of varying breadth across every corner of the franchise.

They are the barometers by which Richardson will be measured, and he'll be expected to one day lead the Colts to division championships and postseason victories. At the very least.

But this nothing new in Richardson's world.

The spotlight was always on him at Florida. He was the Gainesville kid. The Next Big Thing. The guy wearing No. 15, expected to literally follow in program legend Tim Tebow's footsteps.

The experience didn't always turn out the way Richardson hoped. But it taught him a few important lessons he brings with him to the next level.

"I'm not the only person on this team," he said. "They invested a lot into the other players. They invested a lot into this (coaching) staff. So I know they're gonna ride with me, and I'm gonna ride with them. So I don't really see it as I'm the 'main' guy because without the other pieces on the team, the team's not gonna work."

Richardson's seen enough to know the burden is not his to carry alone.

That wasn't always the case with the Gators.

He sat behind future second-round pick Kyle Trask as a freshman in 2020 and then battled injuries and an outgoing coaching staff scrambling to save its own jobs as a sophomore in 2021.

When he finally got handed the reigns as the starter as a junior last year, the responsibility became overwhelming. Everyone in Gainesville knows him, and there was nowhere he could go without hearing about expectations for the next game or why he'd made a mistake in the last one.

It all came to a head in the second game of the season — a showdown against Kentucky and star quarterback Will Levis, a future second-round pick of the Tennessee Titans.

Richardson felt the pressure to win and bolster his fledgling Heisman Trophy campaign, and a poor performance nearly crushed him. That's when he welcomed help in the form of mental coach Brett Ledbetter.

"It's like, 'OK, all these people are supporting me, so I have to make them proud. I have to play good for them,'" Richardson said. "And I was just putting myself at the bottom of the list because I know every time I step on the field I'm happy, but I wasn't making myself happy by playing the game, and it was me just stepping on the field just being there.

"But now I know how to make myself happy first. Because at the end of the day, if I'm not happy then it doesn't really matter."

Richardson said Ledbetter doesn't really give advice so much as have long conversations.

The answers are within the quarterback himself, and through their long talks Ledbetter leads Richardson there in an organic way.

It's changed the way Richardson looks at the game and his responsibility within it.

And the results already are obvious.

Even in the preseason, Richardson wasn't rattled by the moment.

He threw an early interception in his first start against the Buffalo Bills and shook it off to direct a pair of drives into enemy territory.

Two weeks later, he went into Philadelphia in front of arguably the toughest fan base in the league and mocked the Eagles' touchdown celebration by flapping his arms like wings after leading his first scoring drive.

"He's a pretty cool customer," Colts general manager Chris Ballard said. "I stayed on the sidelines this year — which I've done a lot — but I've done it more (this summer). I just wanted to feel it and feel him. Look, when he takes off and runs, you can feel him.

"He's going to have (bad) moments, of course. They all do when they're young. He is really poised, even after a bad play. He's really got some poise to him that's unique. There are going to be ups and downs. We know it. Everybody in this (media) room knows it. I know it. Everybody knows it.

"You've got to keep stepping up and learn from every situation — the good ones and the bad ones — and keep moving forward."

----Richardson's already had several welcome-to-the-NFL moments.

But the one that means the most happened away from the cameras.

It came when his family made the move to Indianapolis and he presented his mother with the keys to her new house. After everything Cleare did to give him a better life, Richardson's greatest accomplishment has been doing the same for her.

"Honestly, it's a blessing to get to get your mom a house, first of all," Richardson said with emotion building in his throat. "We always — we had it kind of hard growing up, for me. We would live in the back rooms of people's houses, live in foster homes sometimes. But it is what it is, so being able to get her a house — I don't really see it as me getting her a house.

"It's just me helping her find a stable place to the point where she doesn't have to worry about anything anymore. But God has blessed us and given us the opportunity to do that. So we're extremely thankful, and just seeing her sign the papers and get the keys to the house — that was a fun moment for us because we've never done anything like that."

Those who wonder how Richardson will deal with the adversity that inherently comes with being a starting quarterback in the NFL need only to look back at how far he's already come.

It's a path he'll never forget.

During his brief time in Indianapolis, Richardson's already become a regular fixture in the community. He does his own grocery shopping, stops to take photos with fans downtown and generally behaves like anything but an entitled superstar-to-be.

At his heart, Richardson doesn't see himself as special.

His first career goal was to become a firefighter, and it wasn't until he realized he could actually beat the long odds to play professional football that he changed his mind.

Now his mind is set on greatness. He mentions it in almost every interview — a desire to not just win championships and individual awards but to truly make a difference for his new franchise and in his new community.

And that won't take place solely on the field.

"Growing up, it was tough, and I know there's people out there struggling the same way I did, if not worse," Richardson said. "So if I can't do anything, the least I want to do is at least put a smile on somebody's face — just be there to talk to them, give them advice, help them out.

"And just try to limit some of the things that's gonna come, some of the hard times that's gonna come. If I can't do anything, at least try to be a mentor because I know people need mentors. I always needed mentors. That's why I played football. I had a lot of coaches and different players to look up to, so I always have to try to help. Because if I don't help, then who will?

"That's the way I see it."