On athletic traits alone, Florida quarterback Anthony Richardson, one of the hottest and most difficult-to-sort prospects in the 2023 NFL Draft, has everything. He’s 6-foot-4 and 231 pounds. He has a missile launcher attached to his right arm. He’s expected to flirt with a 4.4-second 40-yard dash at the combine. He’s even got a big, bright smile.

However, there are questions.

Richardson will be covered relentlessly for the remainder of the draft cycle, because of his skill set and because the football world knows so little about him. He made just 13 starts in college and threw fewer than 400 career passes. Teams will want to know more about his personality. They’ll need to learn about his football IQ and how he leads.

And somewhere along the way they’ll learn that Richardson, in addition to being perhaps the most interesting man in this draft, is a prospect who has been forged in fire.

It was fall of 2016 in Gainesville, Fla., when a 14-year-old with an adult’s frame and a grown man’s voice walked into Mark Smith’s Loften High School classroom and introduced himself. Smith, a former Alachua County fire marshal who runs the Academy of Fire and Emergency Services at Loften’s Professional Academies’ Magnet (PAM) program, had one thought:

“We’re going to need a bigger suit.”

Well before Richardson landed at Florida as a star quarterback, he was a curious high school student interested in becoming an actual firefighter, hoping to train through a unique school program that allowed him to keep his budding football career at nearby Eastside (Fla.) High School separate from his education.