NFL Network analyst Daniel Jeremiah had the Detroit Lions taking Florida quarterback Anthony Richardson with the 18th pick of his second mock draft published earlier this week.
On Friday, Jeremiah said he no longer thinks the Lions will take Richardson at No. 18 — because the dual-threat signal caller will be long gone by then.
“He’s not going to be there when it’s all said and done when the Lions pick with their second pick, so it’s not going to be a problem,” Jeremiah said in a conference call to preview next week’s scouting combine. “The best way to do the quarterback conversation is talk to the teams that don’t need one and then you’ll get kind of an accurate feel, just how they evaluate him and what they think. And Anthony Richardson is the second quarterback for several teams that I talk to.”
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Richardson had arguably the most eye-popping tape of the top quarterbacks in this year’s draft, but he struggled at times with his accuracy and has less experience than other projected top-10 quarterbacks, such as Bryce Young of Alabama, C.J. Stroud of Ohio State and Will Levis of Kentucky.
Jeremiah, a former NFL scout, rates Richardson fourth among that group, but he conceeded Friday “teams are starting to look at some of these quarterbacks as lottery tickets and this one has the biggest payout.”
“You can look at the numbers and it doesn’t look great on paper,” Jeremiah said. “You look at the accuracy, this, that and the other. He’s got elite, elite arm strength. He’s a rare athlete. You don’t see quarterbacks running away from LSU with 80-yard touchdown runs. Like he’s got big-time, big-time ceiling, big-time ability.”
Richardson, listed at 6 feet 4 and 232 pounds, appeared in 24 games in three seasons at Florida with 13 starts. He finished his career with 3,105 yards passing and 1,116 yards rushing, but he completed just 54.7% of his passes and threw 15 interceptions to go with 24 touchdowns.
Richardson’s 393 career pass attempts are similar to what Trey Lance had (318 attempts) coming out of FCS-level North Dakota State when he was the third pick of the 2021 draft. Lance, whose athletic ability is similar to Richardson’s, took a redshirt season with the San Francisco 49ers as a rookie, then missed most of last year with a broken ankle.
Young (65.8% in 949 attempts), Stroud (69.3% in 830 attempts) and Levis (64.9% in 738 attempts) all have significantly more experience and significantly better accuracy than Richardson.
“It’s not one of those years where you have Trevor Lawrence, it’s not Joe Burrow, it’s not Andrew Luck,” Jeremiah said. “It’s not that year where you say, OK, this is that one, I don’t want to say can’t-miss, but it’s going to be hard to miss. We don’t have that. They all have warts, they all have flaws, but I think there’s five potential starters in this group.
“I have it Bryce Young, (then a gap, then) C.J. Stroud, Levis, Richardson (with Tennessee’s Hendon Hooker fifth), but again, if you know who you have developing these guys and you have a plan in place, I think it’s very close when you look at how those guys stack up.”
Jeremiah gave Young to the Houston Texans with the second pick, Stroud to the Indianapolis Colts at No. 4 and Levis to the Las Vegas Raiders at No. 7 in his latest mock draft.
He said Richardson would make sense for the Lions if he was available at 18 because of his upside, because the Lions also hold the No. 6 pick and because they could give him a year to develop sitting behind incumbent starter Jared Goff.
Goff had one of the best seasons of his career last year, when he helped the Lions to a 9-8 record, their first winning season since 2017. He threw 29 touchdowns, went 324 straight pass attempts without an interception to close the year and was selected to the Pro Bowl as an alternate, but is considered by many a system quarterback with limited upside.
Rather than give Goff, who has two years left on his contract, a big extension this summer or next year, Jeremiah said the Lions could take the chance on a more high-end player like Richardson.
“Sometimes when you have those two picks, I almost, I don’t want to say it’s a luxury because you’re trying to get good players but when you look at the landscape of the NFL right now and you look at the high-, high-end quarterback play, this gives you an opportunity to take a shot on one of those guys who could be that,” Jeremiah said. “He’s not at that level right now, but ceiling-wise, with him and Jared Goff, his ceiling’s immensely higher.
“Jared is a solid, steady player right now. He’s playing winning football, but I think there is a ceiling on him. With Anthony Richardson, you don’t have a ceiling, so that’s why I think you’ll see him go. But in making just calls over the last couple days, I don’t even think he’ll get (to No. 18).”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.