Her work schedule left Richardson largely responsible for caring for his little brother, Corey Carter. He’d get Carter dressed for school in the morning and sometimes make him a meal in the evening. The apartment didn’t have a washer and dryer, so he’d hand-wash their clothes in the sink. Before he was old enough to drive, Richardson would ride Carter around town on the handlebars of his mountain bike, often pounding the pedals in the punishing Florida sun while wearing his football pads and helmet.
But when he stepped onto a football field, he felt carefree.
“Sports were a way for me to escape from the stresses of my life,” Anthony says. “What am I gonna eat at night? Are my clothes gonna be washed? Is my little brother gonna have food? Is my mom gonna be stressed out from work? I didn’t have to worry about any of that stuff when I was on the field. Those two hours a day at practice made it possible for me to do what I’m doing now.”
Florida fans started to see what he could do during his redshirt season in 2021. In a role perhaps predictive of one he’ll play in the NFL, Richardson would play 5-10 snaps a game as a changeup to the team’s starting quarterback, Emory Jones. In a memorable performance against USF, he posted a Madden-on-rookie-mode stat line: four carries for 115 yards and a touchdown, 3-for-3 passing for 152 yards and two more scores. He struggled in his first start against Georgia’s NFL-caliber defense and got injured at the end of the year, but there was still an expectation in Gainesville: that, if things went according to plan under new coach Billy Napier, Richardson could emerge as an elite college quarterback.
And for the first 60 minutes of the season, he looked undeniably elite. On our way back from Richardson’s old neighborhood, we drive west down University Avenue and see the long shadow of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium—the Swamp. In Week 1, Richardson scored three times in unranked Florida’s shocking upset over the No. 7 Utah Utes. In the days that followed, he was being compared to Cam Newton and projected as a first-round draft pick.
All of a sudden, his outlet from stress became a stressor itself. In a Week 2 loss against Kentucky, he completed just 40 percent of his passes and tossed two picks in front of two dozen NFL scouts. He had another rough outing the next week against USF. “I’m my biggest critic, so if I’m not close to perfect, I beat myself up,” he says. “I started getting in my head a little bit. Once I’m doing that, that’s when I mess up. I’m at my best when I’m just being free, when I’m just being me, when I’m letting everything flow naturally.”
In the run-up to their next game, a matchup at No. 6 Tennessee, Florida’s coaches compiled 50 of Richardson’s best plays from practice and games. The footage included a jump pass that Richardson had done in training camp. It was somehow even more stunning than his spin against Utah, because in this case he’d done a full 360 and launched the ball even further down the field just a breath after landing. In the caption beneath the clip, where the coaches normally write constructive comments, they just wrote: “Superman.”
David Gardner
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