Head coach Shane Steichen announced on Wednesday that rookie Riley Leonard will be the backup quarterback behind Daniel Jones for the Colts' Week 7 game against the Los Angeles Chargers.
Sunday's game will technically be Leonard's second as a backup quarterback in the NFL, as he was thrust into the role following a freak injury to Anthony Richardson Sr. during pregame band work before the Colts' Week 6 game against the Arizona Cardinals. Richardson was placed on injured reserve on Monday and will miss a minimum of four games.
Leonard didn't have much time to really process anything that day before the game started. He was prepared and he was ready to play, but he was also just hoping his friend was going to be okay.
Now, Leonard has a week to absorb the fact that he'll be Jones' backup. And yet, nothing has changed for the even-keeled, down-to-earth rookie.
"Not really how you want to get the job, right," Leonard said. "You want to really earn it, but that's just the nature of this league, next man up. Praying for AR, obviously, I think he's in really good spirits and hopefully recovering well.
"It won't really change much. Still a backup, just one play away now instead of two. But nothing really changes for me, I kind of operate the same. Live a pretty boring life outside of football, so I don't do much but kind of just prepare."
Sound familiar? It should, because Jones said essentially the same thing after Sunday's win. Jones and Leonard are similar in that sense, and to no surprise: Jones has been a mentor to Leonard since Leonard started playing college football at Duke, Jones' alma mater.
In fact, Jones was a big reason why Leonard committed to play at Duke in the first place. Since then, the two quarterbacks have kept in touch and followed each other's careers. And now that they share a locker room, that mentor-mentee relationship has only grown even stronger.
"I've leaned on (Jones) since the day I got drafted," Leonard said. "There's no better guy to look up to when it comes to how you operate, how you go about your day-to-day routine. The dude's dialed, and obviously it's working on Sundays. So really fortunate to be his backup. Shoot, he was the reason why I committed to Duke back in high school, so it's cool to be playing with him now."
"I love Riley," Steichen said. "I think Riley's come in with the right mindset from day one, the way he works, the way he prepares. So it's a hell of an opportunity for Riley this week. He'll be our backup this week, and we'll see how everything goes through the next couple weeks."
Steichen said the Colts will be signing quarterback Brett Rypien to the practice squad, so they will have three healthy and available quarterbacks. Rypien would have to be elevated to the Colts' gameday roster in order to be active. Additionally, per NFL rules, a team's emergency third quarterback must be on the 53-man roster and can't be elevated from the practice squad to the active roster.
For this week, though, Leonard is QB2. And while nothing about his routine or preparation will change, Leonard did acknowledge there's at least a little bit of a shift in mentality getting ready for gameday, knowing you might actually play that day.
"Mentally it's a little different, but you can't make too much of it," he said. "If I were to go into the game, hopefully it's because we're winning by a lot of points and I've got the fourth quarter to myself, or something like that. You never wish anything upon the starter or anything like that, obviously."
