The Colts are finally moving from camp projections to something that looks like real football, and Anthony Richardson Sr. is still sitting right in the middle of the mess. His active trade request remains on the table as Indianapolis opens the preseason against the Patriots on Thursday night, which means the quarterback situation is not just unresolved — it is now officially entering the part of the calendar where unresolved turns into inconvenient.
That matters because preseason is where roster theory gets tested against injury reality, and injury reality usually wins. During the first two weeks of training camp, the Colts were already working through their 53-man roster projections, but Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in Gillette Stadium begins the next phase of the 2026 season. The question is no longer whether the Colts have options. It is whether they have the luxury of standing still while Richardson’s situation remains active and, by all accounts, has not drawn much interest on the market.
A roster puzzle that is not going away
If Richardson is not traded, Indianapolis could keep three quarterbacks, and that is where this becomes more than a headline about one player’s status. Three quarterbacks is manageable in theory. In practice, it can quickly become the kind of roster decision that forces awkward compromises elsewhere, especially when the preseason is exactly the time injuries start changing the math. Teams always talk about flexibility. The problem is that flexibility disappears fast once a club is trying to protect itself at the most fragile positions.
Richardson is a former Colts starter, so this is not some fringe experiment or depth-chart footnote. It is a significant quarterback decision involving a player whose trade request remains active while the Colts are trying to move forward. That alone creates tension. Add in the fact that he has not generated much interest on the market, and the situation becomes even less neat. In other words, Indianapolis is not operating from a position of power here. It is operating from a position of waiting, which is rarely a comfortable place for any team, especially one entering a preseason opener with so many moving parts.
Why Thursday matters now
The Colts are not just playing a preseason game against the Patriots. They are starting the phase of the season where every snap can affect how a roster is built, how a backup spot is valued and how aggressively a front office has to think about insurance. That is why Richardson’s status feels so important right now. A trade request that had been easy to park in the background during training camp suddenly looks more live when the games begin and the roster spots start tightening.
And if the Colts do keep him, then the entire backup conversation shifts again. That is the real pressure point. Teams can talk all they want about best-case depth charts, but the preseason has a habit of making those plans look optimistic. One injury and the whole conversation changes. So while Thursday night is technically about Indianapolis and New England, it is also about the larger reality of how quickly quarterback plans can get complicated.
Anthony Richardson Sr. may not be the only name in this story, but he is the one forcing the question. As the Colts head into Foxborough for their preseason opener, the trade request remains active, the market remains quiet and the roster logic remains unfinished. That is not a dramatic situation yet. It is worse than that. It is a practical problem, and the preseason is where practical problems tend to stop being theoretical.
