When the Colts lost to the Texans 23-19 last season, Richardson had to wear a gray hoodie on the sidelines. He watched as Gardner Minshew II battled and Jonathan Taylor sparked, watched a defense get burned by C.J. Stroud’s 75-yard touchdown to Nico Collins on Houston’s first play from scrimmage, then limited the Texans to just 4.2 yards per play the rest of the way.

And he, like the rest of the team, was devastated when Minshew’s pass on fourth down deflected off the hands of running back Tyler Goodson. He knew a conversion late in the fourth quarter would have given the Colts a new set of downs with just over 10 yards between them and a playoff-clinching touchdown.

A few days after that loss, Richardson was asked if he was disappointed not to be on the court for that make-or-break game. His response came with both perspective and confidence.

“Not really,” Richardson said, “because I know my career is going to be long, I know these seasons are definitely going to be long and I know we’re going to be fighting with CJ (Stroud) for a long time to come.

“… I know our team and what we can do, I knew we should have had that (playoff) spot, but they played, they executed the way they should have and we didn’t. It hurt a little bit, but I’m not really worried about it because I know we’ve got a lot to do going forward and we’re going to make those runs.”

Sunday is Act II in what could turn out to be one of the NFL’s best intradivisional quarterback battles. (Other battles in the AFC South will also involve the Jaguars’ Trevor Lawrence and potentially the Titans’ Will Levis. This division is loaded with young, talented quarterbacks.) The Colts won the first meeting in Week 2 of the 2023 season, with Richardson making a pair of early touchdown runs before leaving the field with a concussion.

The Texans won the second game, but it wasn’t with Richardson on the field.

Mixon, Diggs and Hunter, of course, weren’t either. The same goes for Texans wide receiver Tank Dell, who missed the Week 18 game with an injury. Houston’s roster has undoubtedly improved with the moves it made this offseason.

But the Colts believe their roster is better, too, even if their offseason went unnoticed outside of Indianapolis. They believe the continuity they bring into 2024 from a team that narrowly missed the playoffs in 2023 is a good thing. And it’s not like the Colts haven’t done it something in the offseason. They selected the first defensive player overall in the 2024 NFL Draft — and defensive end Laiatu Latu had an impressive training camp ahead of his NFL debut this weekend.

But above all, the Colts believe their team as a whole is in the right place for 2024, even if that doesn’t mean making a bunch of high-profile off-season signings.

“(Houston’s) roster has definitely gotten better,” defensive tackle DeForest Buckner said. “But at the end of the day, you can talk about rosters and what rosters look like — I mean, I’ve been in this game for almost 10 years and I’ve seen some great rosters. Super Bowl rosters. It doesn’t mean anything until you go out there and play. In ’22, everybody was talking about our roster, how we had a complete roster, this and that, and you saw how that happened. At the end of the day, you’ve got to go out there every week and compete and play.”

“It’s not like oh, you made a lot of big splays decisions in the offseason, but what we did was bring our guys back,” Taylor said. “That continuity, sometimes it’s not always the best talent, it’s the best team. And now, when you have talent and you have a great team with continuity, you can do special things.”

The Colts came close to doing some special things in 2023. They’ll try to do special things with largely the same group that shuffled home from Lucas Oil Stadium on a cold January night, disappointed by how they fell just short against the Texans.

And they begin their quest to achieve their goals, 11 months on from the date he was injured and the end of the season approaching, with Richardson back behind the midfield on Sunday afternoon.