Dan Orlovsky gives advice to Anthony Richardson: 'Slow down'

Anthony Richardson’s preseason debut for the Indianapolis Colts clearly came with its highs and lows. Regardless of either, though, Dan Orlovsky has a very clear message for this latest draft’s No. 4 overall pick.

Orlovsky spoke about Richardson’s performances on ‘The Pat McAfee Show’ earlier on Monday. If nothing else, he believes Richardson needs to slow down and relax in order to not let his energy, whether nervous or not, affect his play.

“If I was going to give you two words that I would say to Anthony Richardson? Slow down,” said Orlovsky. “Like, you could see just, like, very energetic, almost antsy. I think that’s just the natural nerves.”

Richardson finished his first NFL outing by going 7/12 for 67 yards and an interception. He also rushed twice for seven yards in Indy’s 23-19 loss to the Buffalo Bills.

When it comes to the interception, Orlovsky was more than willing to excuse it. He believes it was a failure from multiple people on their offense and that, to him, Richardson’s intention was to get rid of the football rather than force a play.

“I think the interception was a completely blown play by everybody. He’ll learn from it,” said Orlovsky. “I think that’s a blown play by multiple people on their offense, not just him. I think he’s trying to throw the football away. He’ll probably learn from that.”

None of the quarterbacks from this year’s draft were necessarily great by any means in their preseason debuts. It’s meant to be a learning curve and, with two more preseason games left for the Colts, Orlovsky has made his assessment clear as far as what he wants to see from Richardson in his next appearance.

NFL Network analyzes what Richardson must show during the preseason

The Anthony Richardson era is officially underway in Indianapolis.

Bucky Brooks and Daniel Jeremiah of the NFL Network recently explained what they’re expecting to see from the former Florida quarterback during the Colt’s preseason.

“So for me, Anthony Richardson is a little different,” Brooks said, via the Move The Sticks podcast. “I want to see him show some of the special stuff early, I want to see him run around a little bit. I want to see what it looks like at the pro level. Because a lot of what we talked about, and a lot of why we talked about him being a top-five pick, was because of the athleticism and what he could be. It’s important for me to see him in the preseason tease us with a little bit of that. We heard people talk about him, ‘Hey man, he’s more athletic and stuff than Cam Newton‘. Well, the one thing that we saw Cam Newton do early is he dominated as a runner.

“I know they won’t do a lot of designed quarterback runs, but I’m hoping that there’s a couple of broken plays, where he can give you a little bit of that um, explosive ability on improvisational playmaking.”