NFL Rookie’s Character is a Must-Hear for Young Men.

Young NFL Quarterback Anthony Richardson Shows Remarkable Humility

By Bryan Chai | May 14, 2023 at 2:19pm

Despite the constant media coverage of athletes behaving badly, there are still young men of high moral character competing in America’s “Big Three” sports leagues. Indianapolis Colts rookie quarterback Anthony Richardson is one such athlete, as evidenced by a recent story making the rounds.

During a segment on local radio show “Kevin and Query,” host Jake Query relayed a story about Richardson’s humility during the NFL’s rookie orientation program. Troy Vincent, the NFL’s vice president of football operations, called Colts general manager Chris Ballard after the draft to tell him what an impact Richardson had left on him at the program.

Specifically, after a dinner attended by all potential draftees, the room was left a mess. Everyone was leaving when Vincent saw one person who stayed behind and was bussing tables before the staff came back in the room. Vincent approached him and said, “You don’t need to do this.” To which Anthony Richardson responded, “We left this room in an unacceptable condition, and it’s not right for us to expect the staff to clean it all up.”

That is a mighty impressive sentiment for a young man who will soon be able to hire staff once his first paycheck from the NFL clears. It’s also a maddeningly rare message of self-accountability in a world where most elected lawmakers will do anything but own up to cleaning up their own messes.

Richardson stayed behind to help clean up the room entirely, even though he was free to go. He was the last person working along with the workers of the shift. This small anecdote paints a powerful picture of what character should look like.

For the NFL, Richardson is just the latest in a new wave of rookie quarterbacks who appear to be cut from similar, upstanding cloth. Houston Texans rookie quarterback C.J. Stroud, the second overall pick, immediately praised his “Lord and Savior” after being selected in an awesome moment of faith. Richardson similarly echoed praise for God leading up to the NFL Draft.

The AFC South, the division which includes the Colts, Texans, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Tennessee Titans, might be the most pious division in all of football, at least in terms of quarterbacking. Richardson and Stroud are noted above, but Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence has similarly never been shy about his faith. Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill, the elder of this batch, has also been very upfront about his faith and what it means to him.

The eventual 2024 Super Bowl champions may not emerge from that historically moribund division, but as long as those four young men are the quarterbacks in it, it’ll be mighty difficult to ever describe any of those teams as “losers.”