If you’ve been tracking Daniel Jones‘ career, especially over the last year, you’d see chaos. First, he left the Giants mid-season in November and signed with the Vikings as a free agent in January. Later, we saw Jones leave the Vikings for the Indianapolis Colts for the starting quarterback position. Now that he is at the Colts on a one-year contract, he will be looking to make the most of his time. With the starting quarterback job almost on his plate, he has the opportunity to make the most of it.
An NFL insider has predicted 2025 to be a good season for Jones. Moreover, he has also predicted that Jones will win an award this season. Getting 2,070 yards in 10 games is not a great feat for a quarterback. This resulted in Jones being benched by the Giants. And now, as he trains with the Colts, he will be looking to break the 3,000-yard mark with the help of Shane Steichen. Sensing this, Jeffri Chadiha of NFL.com has predicted him to win the ‘Comeback Player of the Year’ award for the 2025 season.
Jeffri went in-depth on how he thinks Jones will shine again this year. He also puts down three main reasons for his prediction.
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1) An almost confirmed opening spot: The Colts are currently in a bad spot when it comes to the quarterback space on their roster. Anthony Richardson, who was the Colts’ first-round pick in 2023, has failed to impress in the NFL. In the first two seasons he played for the Colts, and managed to play only 15 games. Passing for only 2,391 yards with 176 total passes at an accuracy of only around 50% while scoring 11 touchdowns. Such poor figures were a result of injuries and inconsistent play.
The Colts will also be unwilling to go into a new season with an unreliable Anthony. As a result, everyone’s eyes will be on Daniel Jones. While the Colts do have two rookie QBs in Bean and Leonard. The possibility of Shane Steichen turning to them will be near zero. Especially when you have an experienced QB, who, even though, might have had a bad couple of years, has a lot of potential.
2) Stint at the Vikings: Some time after leaving the New York Giants, Jones signed with the Minnesota Vikings. This gave Jones the opportunity to work with Sam Darnold, “another beleaguered quarterback.” Jones would have learned quite a few important lessons. After all, it was the Vikings’ coaching staff that helped Darnold turn around his playing career.
3) The Shane Steichen Effect: After learning from the Vikings, Jones now comes to Shane Steichen at the Colts. And it seems that would exactly be what Jones needed. Steichen is known as a creative head coach who previously coached the Philadelphia Eagles. It was then that he helped Jalen Hurts turn into an MVP-calibre player from a raw talent. Steichen likes quarterbacks who can move and have a good chance of making Jones a better player. And it isn’t just because of his coaching style. It is also largely because the Colts have “better skill players and offensive line play” than what Jones saw at the Giants.
Jeffri gave Daniel Jones the edge, saying that we could see him turn his career around at Indianapolis. And that Jones only needed to stay fit throughout the season. While Jones is the default QB1 for the Colts as of now, the Colts’ captain seems to have a soft corner for Richardson. After all, they played together for two seasons.
Colts’ captain talks about Anthony Richardson
Earlier this month, news of Anthony Richardson suffering another injury travelled like wildfire. Steichen had revealed that Richardson had aggravated his old AC joint injury. This meant that he would miss out on at least the first couple of weeks of the training camp. As this news spread, Richardson received lots of criticism over his inability to stay injury-free. But it was then that he received some support from Zaire Alexander, his captain.
Appearing on Kay Adams’ show Up & Adams, Colts’ captain Zaire Franklin talked about Anthony Richardson and how the kid has matured over the last year or so. “I definitely see a growth in maturity just from, like, kind of how he’s moving around, you know. I think sometimes it’s definitely easy for people to judge young players just because you know, sometimes we forget what it was like to be 21-22,” he said.
Alexander also spoke about how he sees Richardson maturing fast and growing into a leadership role. “When you feel like with this age and maturity, you kind of got some answers because you live through certain things. Him coming to the league, he had to learn a lot of stuff on the fly. But I definitely see you know, just in him, his growing into his personality, growing into the type of leader, the type you know teammate he wants to be,” he admitted.
While sharing his own experience becoming the team’s captain, Zaire was confident in Richardson. Noting that it would take some time for Anthony to settle down in the dressing room. He also spoke about the recurring injuries that Richardson has been facing. Talking about the latest injury, Zaire said, Unfortunately, he got a little setback, but I’m not worried about it. I think he’s going to be okay.”
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