Between his recurring high-ankle sprains and the sprawling dysfunction that has plagued the Indianapolis Colts offense over the last two seasons, it has been quite a while since running back Jonathan Taylor has been able to fully demonstrate what he is truly capable of on a professional football field. Unfortunately for the star running back, Taylor is not eligible for the sort of clean-slate, change-of-scenery glow-up that players like Christian McCaffrey, Saquon Barkley, and Derrick Henry all successfully benefited from in recent years. Whatever Taylor ultimately accomplishes on the gridiron will likely need to be achieved largely in spite of the surrounding Colts offense, rather than because of it.
The high-ankle injuries he suffered in both of the last two seasons remain a legitimate, mounting concern for the franchise and fantasy managers alike. It makes a distinct amount of physical sense that Taylor would be subjected to considerably more leg stress given his punishing running style, which routinely forces multiple defenders to pile on in order to bring him down. Meanwhile, it remains an easy task for opposing defenses to key entirely on Taylor, especially if the Colts continue to receive erratic or subpar quarterback play from Anthony Richardson and potentially Daniel Jones. The good news for Indianapolis is that Taylor truly is a compelling, game-breaking threat from scrimmage, sitting in a tier similar to elite backs like McCaffrey, Barkley, and Henry. Consequently, if the Colts’ overall offensive unit turns out to be significantly better than expected, Taylor’s fortunes should correspondingly rise right alongside them. It is simply difficult to give Indianapolis much realistic benefit of the doubt on that front, particularly when opposing defensive coordinators know their primary weekly mission is to sell out completely to stop Taylor at all costs.
Taylor’s 2023 season was defined by a bit of a circus atmosphere at the very beginning, and there may well have been a little bit of physical and mental rust as a direct result of the high-profile holdout, lockout, and injury feud that completely kept him out of training camp and the first four weeks of the regular season. Once he finally settled in and got his legs back under him, however, Taylor decisively reestablished himself as one of the elite running backs in the National Football League, churning out 704 rushing yards and seven touchdowns on 155 total carries, which works out to a solid 4.5 yards per carry over his final eight games of the year.
That rushing average was admittedly a bit low by his own lofty historical standards—after all, Taylor averaged more than 5.0 yards per carry across his first two NFL seasons—but overall it was an exceptionally strong showing when viewed through the lens of a thoroughly mediocre offense. Fellow running back Zack Moss subsequently departed the team for Cincinnati in free agency during the offseason, neatly setting up Taylor to handle a substantially larger share of the Colts’ backfield workload in 2024, even though dynamic quarterback Anthony Richardson still figures to siphon away a fair share of the goal-line carries.
While Taylor will always be fundamentally known as a traditional, run-first running back, the departure of Moss, combined with the lucrative three-year, $42 million contract extension that Taylor signed last autumn, gives the Colts organization every good reason to keep him securely on the field for a high volume of passing-down situations as well. The ankle troubles of previous years largely left Taylor alone in 2023—instead, it was an unfortunate thumb injury that sidelined him from Weeks 13 through 15—and the Colts’ notable lack of substantial investment in running back depth strongly hints at their underlying confidence that he can easily carry the heavy load once again this year.
Looking back, Taylor was generally regarded across the industry as the consensus overall RB1 going into the 2022 campaign, and he very well may have successfully held on to that prestigious title if not for a cascade of persistent ankle troubles. First came a standard ankle sprain in Week 4 that lingered stubbornly for five weeks, and that was quickly followed by a devastating, season-ending high ankle sprain suffered in Week 15. It certainly did not help matters that the Colts’ overall roster completely fell apart around him, effectively tanking both his high-value red-zone opportunities and his pass-catching volume.
During his first two dominant professional seasons, Taylor scored a touchdown on a remarkable 5.1 percent of his total carries and averaged an impressive 7.3 yards per target in the passing game. By contrast, in 2022, those efficiency figures plummeted down to just 2.1 percent for touchdowns and 3.6 yards per target. The reality is that Taylor has never truly benefited from elite or even consistently stable quarterback play during his tenure in Indianapolis; Philip Rivers was merely acceptable as a veteran game-manager, and Carson Wentz was something noticeably less than that, but the profound struggles of Matt Ryan proved to be far more than even a talent like Taylor could withstand.
If new head coach Shane Steichen and young franchise quarterback Anthony Richardson can successfully iron out those persistent offensive issues, it would mean an immense amount for Taylor’s overall production and value, especially since he has already repeatedly shown the proven ability to post elite RB1 numbers even when surrounded by mediocre quarterback play. The ankle injuries that derailed his 2022 season were largely due to an unfortunate combination of sheer bad luck and a rushed return from the medical room, but the negative impact unfortunately dragged well into the following year even after he underwent a successful offseason surgical procedure. The Colts initially placed Taylor on the Physically Unable to Perform list right at the start of training camp, and shortly thereafter he officially requested a trade due to deep frustrations stemming from stalled contract extension negotiations. Although he spent time on the regular-season PUP list and was forced to sit out the first four games of the campaign, the underlying talent remained undeniable.
After a solid rookie season that finished with a massive statistical bang, expectations were remarkably high for Taylor coming into the 2021 campaign, and he managed to exceed those soaring expectations by a country mile. He captured his first of potentially many career rushing crowns, and he nearly lapped the entire positional field while doing it. The staggering 552-yard statistical gap between Taylor and second-place rusher Nick Chubb stood as the largest margin between the league’s top two rushers since all the way back in 2009.
Taylor represents the absolute total package as a modern NFL runner, displaying a rare blend of punishing power, slippery agility, elite field vision, and game-breaking top-end speed. It is that latter trait of pure acceleration, however, that consistently puts him well over the top among his positional peers. He impressively posted three of the five fastest top speeds recorded on scoring plays across the entire league that year, highlighted by an NFL-best 22.13 miles per hour recorded on a brilliant 67-yard breakaway scamper in Week 15 against the New England Patriots.
His exceptional power and agility were further underscored by his stellar mark of 2.6 yards per carry after contact, a figure that ranked as third-best across the entire National Football League. If there is any minor flaw to be found within his comprehensive skill set, it is the fact that Taylor is not inherently a natural receiver out of the backfield. Fortunately for Indianapolis, the team utilized players like Nyheim Hines to capably handle those specific passing-down duties, while Taylor remained fully capable of contributing when called upon. While Indianapolis’ formerly elite offensive line showed a couple of minor structural cracks during the 2021 season, and some natural statistical regression was always bound to arrive for Taylor’s league-leading 89 red-zone carries—a total that sat more than 40 attempts ahead of second-place Austin Ekeler—the addition of Matt Ryan to replace Carson Wentz at quarterback did little to alter the fundamental focal point of the offense. Fans and analysts alike rightfully expected Taylor to see enormous volume yet again and continue consistently burning confused defenders with those touches.
When veteran running back Marlon Mack unfortunately ruptured his Achilles tendon in Week 1 of the 2020 season, it was widely assumed by analysts that Taylor would immediately erupt into superstardom. While the rookie did manage to post his first career 100-yard rushing game in Week 2, it actually took him a fair amount of time to truly get going after that initial flash. Between Weeks 3 and 10 of his debut campaign, he consistently failed to top 68 rushing yards in a single contest as he labored through the complex mental and physical adjustment to the speed of the NFL.
However, down the crucial stretch run of the schedule, Taylor dramatically broke through and firmly transformed into the exact type of dynamic player the Indianapolis front office thought it was drafting out of Wisconsin in the second round. Over his final six regular-season games of that rookie year, Taylor amassed a staggering 741 rushing yards and seven touchdowns, highlighted by a mammoth 253-yard, two-score performance in Week 17 that single-handedly helped the Colts lock down a vital playoff berth.
The young runner possessed an enviable, textbook blend of raw power, breakaway speed, and fluid agility, and he consistently showed admirable patience while waiting for his blocking units to open up the precise running lanes that would allow him to explode cleanly into the second level of the defense. While Taylor was not yet recognized as a natural pass catcher, he proved to be more than adequate in that phase of the game, and with complementary pieces like Nyheim Hines on the roster, he was thankfully spared from having to handle the vast majority of those traditional third-down responsibilities. Mack eventually signed a one-year deal to return and provide some veteran insurance, but after the electrifying way Taylor closed out his debut 2020 campaign, it became exceedingly difficult to imagine him operating effectively within any sort of true running back committee. He clearly had not yet reached his ultimate athletic ceiling, and the prospect of more work in high-value goal-line situations—having previously seen barely half of the Colts’ total red-zone carries, a rate well behind contemporaries like Josh Jacobs or Ezekiel Elliott—suggested his production could eventually climb into the statistical stratosphere.
As the latest in a long, illustrious historical line of University of Wisconsin running backs boasting deeply impressive collegiate resumes, Taylor arrived in the professional ranks with immense accolades already attached to his name. He notably became just the second player in the entire history of the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision to record consecutive 2,000-yard rushing seasons, following only Iowa State’s Troy Davis, and he stands as only the second player in history to capture back-to-back Doak Walker awards, joining legendary Arkansas ballcarrier Darren McFadden.
Taylor entered the league as a premier physical specimen, turning heads at the NFL Scouting Combine by clocking an blistering 4.39-second time in the 40-yard dash while playing at a rock-solid, compact weight of 226 pounds. That extraordinarily rare combination of sheer size and elite linear speed allows him to effortlessly bowl over opposing linebackers and defensive backs while simultaneously offering a legitimate, house-call home-run threat from anywhere on the field. Taylor even displayed noticeable, tangible improvement as a pass catcher during his final college season in 2019, and his remarkable natural balance and core power through contact ensured he was far more than just a scheme-dependent system weapon.
Ball security did occasionally present a minor concern, however, both in terms of fumbling troubles—having lost 18 fumbles over 968 total offensive touches during his storied career at Wisconsin—and occasional dropped passes in the flat. Furthermore, Taylor’s mammoth, heavy-duty collegiate workload naturally raised valid questions regarding his overall career shelf life in the brutal environment of the NFL. Like many successful Badger running backs before him, the extreme patience that he naturally developed while running behind a thoroughly dominant collegiate offensive line would not always serve him quite as well in the faster, tighter confines of the professional game.
Fortunately for his career trajectory, he landed directly with an Indianapolis franchise that possessed a strong, credible argument for featuring one of the absolute best offensive lines in the entire league. The only real downside of Taylor’s new professional home was that he faced fierce, immediate competition for both carries and targets right out of the gate, with Marlon Mack firmly in the mix for the former and Nyheim Hines securely accounting for a substantial portion of the latter. While it was always a safe projection that Taylor would eventually command a massive, bell-cow workload, the exact timeline of when that dominance would fully manifest—whether it arrived by Week 1, midway through his rookie season, or fully blossomed by 2021—remained the primary question for a player destined to anchor the Colts’ offensive engine for years to come.
