Just a few months ago, this felt like a foregone conclusion, a formality that would be wrapped up well before the season opener, like so many others had in the past. Anyone you spoke with around the Colts organization knew it was Jonathan Taylor’s turn to get paid.
Pressed on the topic last winter, general manager Chris Ballard offered nothing to the contrary.
“You pay your best players,” he said, asked about extending the 24-year-old Taylor.
“Even if it’s a running back?” I countered, mindful of a diminished market for the position and the Colts’ impending reset after a disappointing and disastrous 2022.
“You pay your best players,” he echoed, reaffirming his stance.
That’s been Ballard’s credo since he arrived in Indianapolis in 2017, and his track record backs that up.
Ryan Kelly got paid a year early, never sniffing the market.
Grover Stewart got paid a year early, never sniffing the market.
Braden Smith got paid a year early, never sniffing the market.
Same with Shaquille Leonard.
Same with Quenton Nelson.
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Taylor had earned his, most believed, torching the league for a franchise-record and NFL-best 1,811 rushing yards in 2021, when he finished second in the voting for NFL offensive player of the year. Late that season, after Taylor had authored a masterful, five-touchdown performance in Buffalo — helping the Colts rout the Bills 41-15 — I ran into Jim Irsay inside an elevator at Highmark Stadium. The team owner was giddy. He’d been texting some of the franchise’s all-time greats that afternoon, urging them to turn on the TV and watch the Colts’ newest star come into his own.
“We got a kid who plays like Edge,” he’d texted Edgerrin James, Peyton Manning and a few others that day.
And it burned at Irsay — frankly, it still does — that the 2021 season ended the way it did, with an unimaginable collapse that cost his team a 98 percent shot at the playoffs. He believed the Colts had a deep playoff run in them, and the biggest reason was Taylor, who was unstoppable for stretches that season.
Even this spring, following Taylor’s injury-marred 2022, Irsay spoke openly of the running back’s career ending in Canton one day. “Special,” he routinely calls Taylor, admitting in late March that it was his hope the Colts would draft a young quarterback and pair him with Taylor for years to come.
So that’s what they did. After the Colts landed Anthony Richardson with the fourth pick in April, Irsay’s mind went back to 1998, when Marshall Faulk helped ease the transition of a young Manning.
Irsay envisioned Taylor doing the same for Richardson.
At that point, nothing hinted at the feud that’s unfolded over the past month, a deeply acrimonious impasse that’s dragged into training camp and feels far from over, rife with Twitter spats, bizarre quotes, a stunning trade demand, an hour-long tête-à-tête aboard Irsay’s bus, no contract offer in sight and what sure seemed like a threat from the team to withhold Taylor’s 2023 salary if he doesn’t suit up.
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Taylor, once a jovial, team-first beacon of unbridled optimism, has looked and sounded starkly different over the past month, watching practices with a tightly-wrapped hoodie and, oftentimes, a scowl on his face. He’s vented on social media, offering a peek at his simmering frustrations. The player whose image hangs on a sprawling mural outside of Lucas Oil Stadium now faces a murky future with the team, with no guarantee he suits up for the Colts again.
What’s also telling: Taylor is now the third player to ask for a trade out of Indy in the past nine months, following running back Nyheim Hines (sent to Buffalo in October) and cornerback Stephon Gilmore (shipped to Dallas in March). The unceasing chaos that sunk last season has bled its way into 2023, and we’re barely a week into training camp.
Of those three trade requests, this is easily the messiest.
It’s a bad look for Taylor, whose tone has changed noticeably since he swapped agents this spring.
And it’s a bad look for Irsay, who’s trying to profess the Colts always take care of their own while, in this instance, they do precisely the opposite. For an owner whose meddling marred so much of last season — and led to the ridiculous hiring of Jeff Saturday as interim coach — a bitter standoff with the franchise’s best player in early August is the last thing this team needs.
So much for a quiet start to the Shane Steichen era.
So much for turning the page on the drama that’s dogged this team for years.
At its worst, this feels like two teenagers beefing in a high school hallway, hurling jabs at one another while everyone stands there in stunned silence, unable to turn away. Things ratcheted up Sunday evening when Taylor responded to reports the Colts were considering placing him on the non-football injury list after he complained of back pain following off-site rehab this summer. The important caveat here: If the injury did indeed happen away from the team facility, putting Taylor on the NFI list would allow the Colts to avoid paying him until he’s medically cleared.
If that were to happen, it’d be the most emphatic statement yet from the team. In essence: If you’re healthy, suit up. Or else.
Taylor shot back immediately, refuting the reports.
1.) Never had a back pain.
2.) Never reported back pain.
Not sure who “sources” are, but find new ones 🤔
— Jonathan Taylor (@JayT23) July 31, 2023
During Monday’s practice, while Taylor watched with his hoodie pulled tight, fans screamed out at him, “Don’t leave us, JT!”
It’s very likely Taylor and his representation are seeking a top-of-market deal, one the Colts are unwilling to dish out at this point. The roster-building approach has changed because it needed to: This team is done convincing itself that it’s close. That’s what 2021 and 2022 taught them. If Irsay and Ballard want to wait and see where Taylor’s at while he continues to rehab his ankle and how he fits in with Richardson in the backfield, that’s absolutely their right. Most within the building assumed Taylor would be full-go at the start of training camp. That he was not was a surprise to say the least.
Both the owner and general manager have cited the ankle in recent interviews, hinting at their chief concern before handing out a lucrative long-term deal.
“It’s early in the process,” Irsay told reporters Saturday. “We wanna make sure everyone’s 100 percent when they get on the field. We don’t have any (long-term) concerns. I’m hopeful we all understand the situation we’re in.”
The reason Irsay invited Taylor on his bus: He wanted to reinforce to his franchise running back that the Colts take care of their own. This is deeply personal to the owner, a man whose relationships with former players stretch decades beyond their playing careers. Irsay, he’ll quickly remind you, grew up in the game and used to lift weights with the Baltimore Colts’ defensive linemen in the 1970s — my “big brothers” he still calls them. These men are not simply his employees. He likes to think of them as family.
“Everyone knows no organization — and I mean no organization — treats its past and present players like the Colts do,” Irsay said. “Houses, wheelchairs, we get them money … we don’t announce that to (the media).”
Colts team owner Jim Irsay thinks of Colts players, past and present, not as his employees but as his family. (Joe Robbins / Getty Images)
He’s right. Former players have told me as much. The affinity most have for their former boss speaks to this; James and Marvin Harrison saw their gilded runs in Indianapolis end prematurely, and years later, both chose Irsay to induct them into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It’s a testament to how they feel about the man. The owner calls James “one of my best friends in life.”
But James made $42 million in Indy, Harrison $68 million. Taylor is entering the last of a four-year rookie deal that’ll pay him less than $8 million total. He’s the 11th-highest-paid player on the team and the sixth-highest paid on a bad offense.
His stance — wanting a long-term deal — is more than justified. Especially after so many key pieces on the Colts’ roster have been rewarded in recent years.
What he’s asking for is likely part of the hiccup, at least from the Colts’ side of things. It’s not 1996 anymore. Paying a running back top dollar is no longer a central tenet to building a championship team.
As Ballard said recently, “The market is what the market is.”
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As for the trade demand, Irsay’s been adamant: It’s not happening. Not now and not before the deadline in October. The team owns every bit of leverage here and has the option of placing the franchise tag on Taylor each of the next two offseasons — a last-ditch outcome that would surely not be either side’s preference. (The last time the Colts tagged a player was Pat McAfee in 2013.)
“This isn’t a comment that has to do with Jonathan Taylor’s situation, but I’m responsible for everyone on the team,” Irsay said. “And to look at the (salary) cap money that you have and the contracts that you have to go forward … it’s my responsibility to be fair and to make sure that every player is treated fairly and gets their share of the (salary) cap. I don’t take that job lightly.”
What’s become evident: Taylor wants his share, and he’s not getting it before the season. The fact that his new agent, Malki Kawa, spent last week chirping at Irsay on Twitter hasn’t helped the situation, though it’s my understanding the Colts had no major issues working with Kawa in 2021 while hammering out a five-year, $98 million extension for Leonard, whom Kawa also represents.
Weigh what Taylor said in April, before he changed agents: “I’m under contract for four years. I put pen to paper. So that’s where I’m at right now. I made an obligation to them. They made an obligation to me.”
Now weigh where the two sides are at now: The disgruntled running back hasn’t spoken publicly since June, save for social media. At training camp, he watches the running backs work under the stifling summer sun with his hoodie pulled tight, having demanded a trade out of the city where he grew into an NFL star.
Jonathan Taylor, who is still on PUP, daps up Deon Jackson. Zack Moss is here watching as well. #Colts pic.twitter.com/ZgxfKBju5z
— James Boyd (@RomeovilleKid) August 1, 2023
“Right now, he’s on this football team,” Steichen said Monday. “He’s on this football team, and when the medical staff clears him, he should be out there.”
As Taylor said earlier this summer: The ball’s in the Colts’ court.
It was, and the Colts made their decision.
If and when it happens, Jonathan Taylor will have to make his.
(Top photo: Michael Owens / Getty Images)
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