The two biggest deterrents to Anthony Richardson becoming a star quarterback in the NFL are experience and accuracy. Experience will come with time. He has to deliberately work on being more consistently accurate.

In his first season as a starter in college, Richardson completed 53.8 percent of his passes, but the Florida offense and receivers played a role in that alarming figure. The scheme didn’t involve a ton of easy bubble screens but instead featured deeper play-action shot plays, and the Gators didn’t have receivers who got open deep or tracked passes well. Still, Richardson’s film features clear misses by him, and when they happened, they often were ugly.

Fortunately for Richardson, unlike other long-levered, bigger quarterbacks, his accuracy issues won’t require a massive relearning of mechanics (like what Josh Allen experienced coming from Wyoming). Richardson’s problems begin with his feet, an issue that is more easily correctable than re-sequencing his entire throwing motion. Richardson has no illusions about what he needs to improve on. He has been working with Will Hewlett, who is regarded as one of the best private quarterback coaches in the country, to fine-tune his mechanics. Hewlett works with the Quarterback Collective, which partners with several NFL coaches, including Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay, and helps college quarterbacks prepare for the draft with 6 Points and Torque Sports.

In preparation for a film session with Hewlett, I selected clips that represent Richardson’s most common types of misses. Hewlett broke down the mechanical issues in each clip, and we talked about how he and Richardson are correcting those issues.

“There’s definitely misses on film, and I don’t think anyone’s in denial — including him — about that,” Hewlett said. “I think that was just part of his process: figuring out who he was as a thrower, identifying two to three really focused areas that he can cue himself and dig into and then move from there.”