Colts head coach Shane Steichen said he's "evaluating everything" when asked Monday if Anthony Richardson would be his team's starting quarterback for Sunday's Week 9 game against the Minnesota Vikings at U.S. Bank Stadium.
Steichen said "right now, today (Richardson)" is the Colts' starting quarterback, and said the Colts will have ongoing conversations in the next couple of days regarding what's next at that position.
"We're evaluating everything, not just the quarterback – we all gotta be better," Steichen said. "We're sitting at .500 and looking back at what we've done, there's a whole bunch of areas that we can improve on. I'm not just talking about the quarterback, I'm talking about everything. And we got to be better moving forward."
The Colts lost, 23-20, on Sunday in Houston, a loss which effectively put them three games behind the division-leading Texans, who at 6-2 also own the season series tiebreaker over the 4-4 Colts. Richardson completed 10 of 32 passes for 175 yards with a touchdown, an interception, a passer rating of 48.3 and 45 rushing yards on six attempts.
"Obviously there's a whole bunch of different things, right," Steichen said. "It's not just one guy. It's everything. We gotta look at the whole big picture and look at our football team, look at our roster, look at our personnel, look at our scheme and then we go from there."
Steichen said there was no discussion at halftime on Sunday of replacing Richardson with Joe Flacco, and said Richardson tapping out of Sunday's game for a third-and-23 play did not factor into the Colts evaluating Richardson being their starting quarterback. Both Steichen and center Ryan Kelly, though, said they had conversations with Richardson about tapping out of the game not being up to the Colts' standard.
"We had a conversation about it this morning in the quarterback room, which I'll keep private, but obviously in those situations he knows, right, on those type of deals, you can't take yourself out," Steichen said. "It's a learned experience for him and he's gotta grow from it."
