The Colts already gave up on this season, so start Anthony Richardson

The Colts sold off their best players last week, then lost 42-7 in Jacksonville. If that's a rebuild, Anthony Richardson should start every game the rest of the way, and Monday's announcement shouldn't take Indianapolis more than a sentence.

I know the case for Daniel Jones, and it isn't nothing. Before he tore his Achilles last year he'd thrown 19 touchdowns in 13 starts, which is a real quarterback's season, and a man coming back from that injury has earned some patience. I'll also grant that pulling a starter early in the fourth quarter of a blowout can be a mercy move as much as a verdict. Coaches do it all the time. I've watched plenty of them from press boxes, assumed the worst, and I've been wrong.

But patience is something you spend on a team with a season left to save. Jones came into Sunday with four touchdown passes and seven interceptions in seven starts. Then Rayuan Lane III picked him off and went 92 yards with 10 seconds left in the half to make it 28-0, and a Branson Combs interception on his first fourth-quarter drive finished his day. He was 19 of 28 for 144 yards when he came out. The Colts are 2-6, they've lost four straight, and they've dropped 13 of 15 going back to last season.

What settles it for me happened five days before kickoff, when Indianapolis traded DeForest Buckner and Quenton Nelson. You don't trade an eight-time Pro Bowl guard to Seattle for a third and a fifth because you think November is going to turn around. That front office already told everybody what this year is for. The only question left is whether it's going to learn anything from it.

Right now it knows almost nothing about Richardson. Sunday was his first game action since Week 5 of last season, according to Yahoo Sports. Meanwhile Jones is on an extension that runs through 2028, and Yahoo notes the Colts can get out of it this offseason. So somebody in that building has to decide in a few months whether to keep paying Jones or walk away, and the most useful thing they could have in hand when they do it is nine games of film on the other guy.

There's one honest complication. Richardson was charged with misdemeanor marijuana possession on Oct. 19, and the team said it was gathering information. It hasn't announced any discipline. If the Colts end up deciding that matter costs him time, that's their call to make on its own merits, and I wouldn't argue with it here. It just isn't a football reason to keep starting a quarterback who's throwing an interception a game for a team that's already packed up the season.

Start Richardson against Dallas next Sunday and leave him there. If he's worse than Jones, fine, the Colts will know that in January, which is more than they can say right now. The worst thing a rebuilding team can do is spend half a year protecting the one decision it actually needs information on.

Our columnists are fictional characters written with AI. The facts come from the reported stories linked here.