Anthony Richardson has been battered and bruised this season.
Literally.
Every time it’s looked like the redshirt freshman from Gainesville was ready to take over the starting quarterback job, he’s gotten injured shortly thereafter.
He strained a hamstring during his 80-yard touchdown run at South Florida in week two. That injury caused him to miss the next two games. He had to leave the LSU game for a few plays while he received treatment for a cut on his hand.
He made his much anticipated first career start two weeks later against Georgia and left the game in the third quarter with a concussion.
Richardson got cleared to practice the following Thursday, only to sprain a knee while dancing at the team hotel on Friday night before the South Carolina game.
Just about every part of Richardson’s body has been in pain at some point over the past two months. Some of those injuries are just the product of bad luck; hard hits to the head that cause concussions and cuts on the hand are going to happen occasionally when playing football.
However, some of his injuries could’ve easily been avoided. Nobody made him try to do some complicated social media dance the night before a game. Nobody made him do a backflip during warmups earlier this season.
While quarterbacks coach Garrick McGee is appreciative of the energy and enthusiasm that Richardson brings to the team, he thinks that Richardson needs to be more careful about the dangerous situations that he puts his body in moving forward.
“When you talk to his mother, she just said he needs to grow up,” McGee said. “‘Coach, I know this kid looks like a man, and I know the Lord has blessed him with a lot of talent, but this is a baby.’ And not only do we have to train him on how to be a quarterback – how to take drops, how to read defenses – [he’s] just got to grow up and understand how to be serious and how to be focused all the time so that he can lead our program to a championship at some point. That’s the deal with him.
“I was out at the indoor [practice facility] and found out he could have injured himself dancing in the indoor. That’s something that goes along with that, got to learn to grow up. Can’t afford that in a program like that. Can’t afford injuries. You’re going to run [through] enough guys during the game. He understood it. He’s just a kid trying to grow up while he’s in college. Just so happens he’s a tremendous football player.”
The coaches and strength and conditioning coordinator Nick Savage have also changed his practice routine to try to avoid more soft tissue injuries like the strained hamstring that he suffered earlier this year. Richardson is 6-foot-4 and 236 pounds, but he runs like a 5-foot-11, 190-pound slot receiver. So, it’s important that they keep his muscles and ligaments stretched out instead of allowing him to do too much too soon.
“Another thing we did learn after that … is on a practice field, he has to get to top speed on the practice field,” McGee said. “He can’t just be a quarterback and drop and throw.
“He is so fast, and his muscles are going to move and strain so much when he’s running. Coach Savage started keeping him and getting him to get to top speed during a practice session so that his muscles could hold up when he gets to top speed during the games.”
McGee said that Richardson’s injuries have held the offense back a little bit. He’s one of their most dynamic and versatile playmakers. When things bog down, they can give him the ball and let him do something special. They haven’t had that at their disposal for large chunks of the season.
“We really were trying because there’s some things he can do that are incredible, and, in certain moments in games, you need someone to change the momentum here in the SEC,” he said. “And the momentum changes on you and the other team has the momentum, you need someone to spark that and get the momentum back on that sideline. That’s what these game-breaking players are able to do. I thought in the LSU game, Anthony took the momentum back and took over the game by himself. There were times in other games for one reason or another he was injured at the time.”
Richardson was limited in practice last week while recovering from his dancing-induced knee injury, but he should be able to play at Missouri this week.
“He’s, like, back to 100 percent healthy right now,” head coach Dan Mullen said. “[He] was still up and down last week, excuse me, but he’s 100 percent as far as I know at Monday at 1:30. So, he’s available to play this week. But Emory [Jones has] been playing really well. So, I’m not going to say we might not have a good package or something to get Anthony in there. I’m still putting the plan together, but, hopefully, he’s fully available.”
And hopefully, for the Gators’ sake, he’ll remain fully available for several years to come.