Anthony Richardson: ‘Lord knows what my ceiling is.’ Will Colts be the team to find out?

GAINESVILLE, Fla. - Anthony Richardson dropped back and faked a pitch to no one, a subtle trick to buy time for the slow-motion movie he's making with his life.

The 20-year-old then turned right and drifted, and drifted, and waited, and then launched. He stepped forward as something more like a man, testing the human limits. A ball exploded from his right fingertips into a rainbow through the air at Florida's Condor Family Indoor Practice Facility, and he watched with everyone else as it soared 72 yards and dropped into the hands of a receiver who was suddenly like a speck out an airplane window as he streaked into the end zone.

Then Richardson jogged after him, pausing at midfield to do a hand-stand and flip 360 degrees backward, landing on his feet with a final smile for the NFL scouts in attendance.

"That's definitely my last one, I think," he said with a smile. "I feel like I'm getting older, so my body won't be able to hold up on a backflip anymore. We'll see."

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This is a boy merging with a man here, showing off in front of hundreds of eyes paid highly to scout the difference between the two. He's a 20-year-old who rides a black mountain bike with his younger brother, Corey, on the handle-bars. He speaks of quarterbacking like a backflip he just launched into, an act of sheer courage he feels cosmetically wired to land.

And yet he lands enough of these acts because the legs he's operating on belong to those of a man. He measured and tested those limbs last month at the NFL Scouting Combine, checking in at 6-foot-4 and 244 pounds. He jumped higher than any quarterback in the history of the event at 40.5 inches. He leaped farther than all but one, too, at 10 feet 9 inches. And he sprinted 40 yards in 4.43 seconds, a time reserved for the pro defensive backs he'll throw at next season.

"I actually met him in the sixth or seventh grade. He was athletic then. He could jump out of the gym then," said Florida defensive tackle Gervon Dexter Sr., who also grew up in central Florida. "All of the stuff he did at the combine, it surprised a lot of people, but it didn't surprise me."

Richardson still attacks football with the enthusiasm of that seventh-grader, in part because he never had to leave him behind. He attended Eastside High School in Gainesville, where he dreamed of running into the Swamp with a Gator Chomp and leading a team with his radiant joy like the hero of his childhood, Tim Tebow. The kids around him never caught up in height or weight, and each deep throw and stiff-arm of a Southeastern Conference defender made him feel like those childhood dreams never had to die.

That doesn't mean it was all perfect or even close. Behind those tree-trunk legs and linebacker torso are some warts, like a 54.7% career completion rate and just 24 touchdown passes and 13 starts at Florida. And even in these controlled settings in his backyard, on a day of highlight throws, he can fire a fade ball over a receiver's head or have a swing route to a running back go behind his back.

"I'm a workhorse. I'm going to work to become the greatest," Richardson said.

Never in the passing league era has a college quarterback with Richardson’s mix of experience and production become a notable NFL quarterback. But rarely has one had the measurables he has and been given the same opportunity.

He is a wind-up toy. Ask him where he needs to get better and he can't pin it down.

He hasn't scratched that part of the surface yet.

"If you ask me, I'd say everything: footwork, accuracy, arm power, leadership, decision-making. I could go on and on," Richardson said.

Asked about his lack of production, he'll say, "I can't control everything. I do feel like I'm a great player."

Richardson can be effervescent about his strengths and evasive on his weaknesses. He's a 20-year-old getting ready to leave his hometown for the first time, a maturation process the NFL is trying to microwave with cameras, comparisons and hyperbole.

Richardson is grinning through it.

"The sun is shining," Florida guard O'Cyrus Torrence said. "If you're in a room with people who are sad, you'll see him smiling. He lifts up the morale of the room. You can see it in sparks out here on the field, but you really see it in the locker room."

Richardson thrives on joy, and doing things with a football others cannot brings him that. It's harder to dwell on the details or the negative, but he and those close to him are trying.

Last season's 6-7 season tested that nerve in its first-year starting quarterback, and after a 42-20 loss to rival Georgia, it was Richardson who stood up in the meeting room the next day and challenged his teammates. He spoke of those childhood dreams of playing here, and how it was never just about wearing the uniform but doing something special in it.

Those struggles created questions for teams. At his pro day, he tried to walk back some of the hype he threw on himself at the combine, back when he spoke about playing like a cross between Cam Newton and Lamar Jackson and describing himself as legendary.

"I don't believe in hype," he said. "Hype can take you down the wrong tunnel, and I'm not going down the wrong tunnel."

But he's also not afraid of it.

"I wore No. 15 here at the University of Florida. A lot of people thought it was going be hard for me to try to mimic Tebow, but I didn't want to mimic Tebow. I just wanted to be the best version of myself," Richardson said. "So if Carolina was to draft me, then I'm not going to try to be like Cam (Newton)."

This is Richardson shifting into business mode, trading that sweat-soaked white spandex T-Shirt for a suit that doesn't quite fit yet.

He has six interviews with teams, including the Colts, who sit behind the Panthers and Texans in the quarterback draft order. Indianapolis had director of scouting Morocco Brown in attendance, a shift from Midwest area scout Mike Lacy, who handled C.J. Stroud's and Will Levis' pro day.

A job interview invites something metaphysically different than a kid launching a football into a steel white beam, like Richardson did Friday and joked it was because he saw Levis do it and wanted to match him.

"Lord knows what my ceiling is and what it's going to be," he said.

That, in a nutshell, is the Richardson experience. Nobody knows where this ship is going to end up, just that it's about to take off.

But a kid from Gainesville can still smile from the launch pad. That's what he did in the moments after he heaved those 50-some passes into the sky. Teenagers and college students approached in small groups for photos with the latest wonderkid draft prospect, and Richardson smiled as the cameras clicked, the shutters capturing the beginning of a journey with not a care in the world about the end.

Contact Colts insider Nate Atkins at natkins@indystar.com. Follow him on Twitter @NateAtkins_.