Colts Stick With Daniel Jones After Week 7 Loss: Why Anthony Richardson Remains QB2

The Indianapolis Colts are not making a quarterback change. Head coach Shane Steichen said he has not considered benching Daniel Jones after Sunday’s 16-10 loss at Minnesota, leaving Anthony Richardson Sr. in the No. 2 role as Indianapolis begins Week 8 at 2-5.

That is the confirmed decision. The more important question is whether it should be treated as an open-ended commitment. Football Nation’s answer is no: Jones should start against Jacksonville, but the Colts need a defined performance checkpoint because the passing game has not created enough margin for error.

What Steichen confirmed after the Vikings loss

Steichen’s postgame explanation was direct: the Colts built their plan around running the football, he still has faith in Jones and the late interception did not change his quarterback decision. The official Colts postgame video specifically says Steichen explained why he is sticking with Jones moving forward.

Jones completed 13 of 22 passes for 108 yards with no touchdowns and one interception. The final turnover came with Indianapolis driving for a possible winning touchdown, when Harrison Smith intercepted Jones after a completion to Josh Downs. Jones also took four sacks and added 13 rushing yards. Those figures are confirmed by the Colts’ official player statistics and the team’s Week 7 recap.

Jones accepted responsibility for the deciding mistake, calling it a poor decision in postgame comments reported by Reuters. That matters because the play was not a tipped ball or a receiver error; the quarterback had the ball with a chance to win and made the mistake that ended the possession.

Why Jones remains the defensible Week 8 starter

The case for continuity starts with 2025. Jones threw for 3,101 yards, 19 touchdowns and eight interceptions in 13 starts for Indianapolis before a torn Achilles ended his season. The Colts saw a functional version of this offense with him, and seven uneven games in 2026 do not erase that evidence.

The second point is what the coaching staff is asking its quarterback to do. Indianapolis rushed 33 times for 154 yards in Minnesota and built a 10-6 halftime lead. Jonathan Taylor’s 38-yard touchdown was the offense’s best play, while the defense kept the Colts within one score. The plan was deliberately conservative against an unbeaten Vikings team. Benching the quarterback immediately after nearly stealing that game would be a major philosophical reversal.

There is also no on-field 2026 evidence that Richardson is the safer option. Richardson has not appeared in a regular-season game this year. His physical ceiling remains obvious, but his career completion rate is 50.6 percent with 11 passing touchdowns and 13 interceptions. The Colts can prefer Jones without claiming Jones has played well.

Why the leash cannot be unlimited

The official Colts table lists Jones at 143 completions on 240 attempts for 1,398 yards, four touchdowns, seven interceptions and a 69.4 passer rating through seven games. The completion rate is 59.6 percent. That is not merely a one-game slump. Indianapolis has lost three straight, and the offense has produced 22, 20 and 10 points in those defeats.

The context around the team also raises the pressure. The Colts already changed general managers after a 2-4 start, so every major football decision now carries evaluation value for the next leadership structure. Jones is not only trying to win the next game; he is supplying evidence about whether the offense needs another reset in 2027.

The practical threshold should focus on process rather than one headline statistic. Against Jacksonville, Indianapolis needs Jones to protect the ball, turn third downs into manageable completions and create at least a few explosive passes off the run game. If the offense again becomes one-dimensional and the turnovers continue, Richardson’s first-team practice reps should become a real weekly question.

What this means for Anthony Richardson and the offense

Richardson remains a developmental alternative, not the announced starter-in-waiting. The Colts previously named Richardson the backup and addressed his trade request. Nothing Steichen said Sunday changes that depth-chart decision. It does, however, make the weekly allocation of first-team repetitions more important if Indianapolis keeps losing.

For fantasy football, Jones is a low-floor option outside deep two-quarterback and superflex formats. Taylor remains the centerpiece because the Colts showed in Minnesota that they will keep leaning on the run even in a negative game environment. Josh Downs and Tyler Warren retain volume paths, but their ceilings depend on Jones producing more than the 108 passing yards he managed in Week 7.

The team result is covered in Football Nation’s Vikings-Colts Week 7 recap. The quarterback decision is a separate story because it controls Indianapolis’ Week 8 plan and the evaluation of Richardson.

Football Nation conclusion

Steichen made the correct short-term call. Jones should start in Week 8 because the Colts have a recent full-season sample showing he can operate this offense, while Richardson has not played this season and has not yet established reliable down-to-down accuracy.

But the decision should come with a clear checkpoint: evaluate Jones after the first Week 8 practice cycle and again after the Jacksonville game, with special attention to first-team reps, third-down execution, red-zone efficiency and turnover-worthy decisions. Sticking with Jones today is defensible. Treating the job as settled regardless of performance would not be.

Reporting cutoff: October 26, 2026 at 10:17 a.m. Central. Comparison period: 2026 regular season through Week 7. Confirmed sources: Colts game recap, Steichen postgame video, Colts player statistics and Reuters’ October 26 report. Football Nation analysis is labeled as such above.