Inside the Colts' player-led offseason throwing sessions in Miami

WESTFIELD — Anthony Richardson showed up in Gators gear.

The University of Miami graciously agreed to let the Indianapolis quarterbacks and skill players hold their annual summer minicamp on Hurricane fields, and on the first day, there was Richardson, cheerfully stepping onto the field in rival blue and orange.

Richardson’s Colts teammates got to see another side of their new quarterback.

“I thought it was funny,” wide receiver Alec Pierce said with a laugh. “I liked that.”

The moment was small.

But it also let Richardson’s teammates learn a little bit more about their rookie quarterback, the exact reason the Colts hold these sessions every summer, even as the franchise has cycled through five different starting quarterbacks since Andrew Luck’s shocking retirement. From a football standpoint, the player-led summer minicamps are a chance to build chemistry on the field; it’s also another opportunity to get to know the team’s new leader.

When Richardson was in Indianapolis for offseason workouts after the draft, he spent almost all of his time with his head buried in the playbook — so much that veteran wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr. joked that he sometimes had to snap his fingers just to get the rookie’s attention to talk about something.

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Being together in the summer, in a little bit more relaxed setting, gave everybody a better window into the man the Colts drafted to be their franchise quarterback.

And Richardson’s not about to let his loyalties slide.

“Growing up the first half of my life in Miami, my family wanted me to go there,” Richardson said. “But no, I’ve got to rep Florida wherever I go. Going down there, getting the routine together with the receivers, that was good. It kind of helped us get on faster pace, faster train to prepare ourselves for the season. I definitely feel like that was needed.”

Because Richardson’s a rookie, putting the minicamp together was a little different than it’s been the past couple of years.

For the past couple of seasons, Indianapolis has been led by established quarterbacks.

The kind of guys who can make it easy for everybody else to make the trip.

“In the past, we had some higher net-worth quarterbacks that would pay for that,” Pittman Jr. said. “But the fact that everybody came out on their own dollar shows, everybody was serious.”

Pittman Jr. deserves a lot of credit for making the 2023 summer session come together.

The fourth-year wide receiver, firmly established as the team’s No. 1, knew he wanted to get everybody together to throw, but he didn’t know the when or the where. Pittman Jr. stepped into the gap, figured it all out, then got just about everybody there.

All three quarterbacks made it to Miami. According to Pittman Jr., 95% of the skill players also made it — second-year tight end Jelani Woods was one of the ones who missed because he was dealing with a family matter — and when they arrived, Pittman Jr. set the tone.

“I said a couple things, a couple of opening statements,” Pittman Jr. said. “But really, the quarterbacks are the offensive leaders, so you let them lead.”

For three consecutive days, the Colts stepped onto the field at 8:30 a.m., held team meetings, walk-throughs and then worked through routes on air, running plays from Shane Steichen’s playbook, until noon. Players would break around 1 p.m. — some to rest, some to explore, Pittman Jr. out onto the ocean to do some deep-sea fishing — then come back together to go to dinner together.

Under Steichen, the team did some bonding trips in the spring, like bowling, but there’s something about building bonds without the bosses.

“In a bit more of a casual setting, without the coaches around, people can be a little bit more comfortable, a little more like themselves,” Pierce said.

The past couple of seasons, the offseason throwing sessions helped players like Philip Rivers, Carson Wentz and Matt Ryan start building relationships with a new set of teammates. No matter what happened on the field, Rivers and Ryan, in particular, left Indianapolis with sterling relationships and reputations in the locker room.

Those guys didn’t need as much work on the offense.

Neither does veteran backup Gardner Minshew, who spent the last two seasons with Steichen in Philadelphia and is competing with Richardson for the starting job on opening day.

For Richardson, and for just about everybody else, the work in the new offense was necessary.

When the Colts got back together for the start of training camp Wednesday, the quarterbacks thought they could feel the effects of the throwing session.

“We were able to hang out, get together and refresh on the plays and everything,” veteran Gardner Minshew said. “New offense. Went through OTA’s, but then you get a little time off. I think it was great to get to kind of refresh, and I think it showed today. I think we were pretty sharp mentally coming out here.”

And a little tighter than they would have been without Miami.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts: Inside the player-led offseason throwing sessions in Miami