Colts Need to Pay Jonathan Taylor, or Anthony Richardson Might Struggle

Plus, Justin Herbert’s extension, the Vikings’ financial reset, defending Nathaniel Hackett, Dalvin Cook and the Jets, the Darius Slay–Matt Patricia relationship, good vibes in Washington and more in this week’s training camp takeaways.

More from Albert Breer: How Patrick Mahomes Is Trying to Become More Like Tom Brady | How the Vikings Found Balance and Unlocked a New Kirk Cousins | Q&A: How the Lions’ Leaders Knew to Keep Believing

Got six training camps under my belt, and we’ll have takeaways from there and elsewhere. Let’s roll …

The Colts should pay Jonathan Taylor. I know, I know. There are cautionary tales of backs paid after three years. There are a lot of ways to fill that position that don’t cost $13 million per year. In this particular case, you have a guy coming off an injury-riddled year.

Here’s my counter—think about your quarterback.

In the same way that Todd Gurley was once huge for Jared Goff’s development and Ezekiel Elliott was integral to how the Cowboys brought along Dak Prescott, having Taylor alongside Anthony Richardson would, in my mind, allow for Shane Steichen, Jim Bob Cooter and the Colts’ coaches to build an optimal environment to play their young quarterback early and allow him to grow through it.

The Colts need Taylor to get the most out of Richardson, their No. 1 draft pick / The Indianapolis Star-USA TODAY NETWORK

The one thing I heard over and over again about Richardson before the draft is how, unlike a lot of other quarterbacks tagged with the “raw” label, he actually probably needs to play more than he’d benefit from sitting. The reason? Sitting a guy is often to try to break him of habits formed in an offense that isn’t applicable to the NFL. In Richardson’s case, his playing time was so minimal in college, it’s almost like there aren’t habits. In the truest sense of the term, he really is a ball of very talented clay for the coaches to shape.

And because he didn’t play much in college, he hasn’t seen much, and it’s on the Colts to try to make sure that changes, and changes quickly. So he’ll get a lot of reps in joint practices with the Eagles and Bears. He may play a lot in preseason games, too, and ultimately there’d be nothing that’d build the football library in his head faster than throwing him out there and playing him in the regular season—provided Indy believes (and I think it does) that the expected ups and downs won’t shake his confidence.

So how does Taylor play into all of this? Easy. He’s the focal point of the offense. He’ll become an even bigger threat with the fear that Richardson’s running ability strikes into defenses. He’ll allow the coaches to get into second-and-6 and third-and-2 more routinely, which will allow them to manage the quarterback’s play as they see fit.

And if it helps you get the most out of Richardson’s first couple of years in the league, to have Taylor there, well, I don’t think you can put a price tag on that. Again, I get it. Paying running backs can be a scary thing. But in reality, you’ll probably be giving Taylor less than what, say, Hunter Renfrow got in Vegas. If that helps your quarterback develop, then it’s more than worth the freight, even if there’s a year on the back end that doesn’t feel great.

(Also, Taylor’s the right kind of guy, and rewarding a player with his standing in the locker room wouldn’t be a bad thing, particularly with a first-year coach in Indy.)

Early signs are encouraging with Richardson. I have a good story on that, too. One area where the Colts figured he might struggle, based on his lack of experience and the offenses he ran at Florida, was calling plays in the huddle. But through the spring and summer, that’s been, really, the least of his problems. The coaches radio plays in, and he spits them out.

That, of course, doesn’t mean you should bet your mortgage that he’s going to make it. But it’s a good early sign that, for a player who has a long, long way to go developmentally, there’s a real capacity to learn. And the talent, by the way, is obvious—the night I was there was filled with wow throws, and it’s not just his arm strength. It’s the quick release and how he can wedge the ball into tight windows.

“When I put on his tape after I got hired, I said, This guy can be special,” Steichen told me after Saturday’s practice. “That was just watching the tape. Now just the physical attributes he brings, the way the ball comes out of his hands and things you can do in the offense, I’m really excited about it.”

And most exciting, to Steichen, has been the kid’s approach.

“The work ethic he’s brought in, obviously with 13 starts and then coming into the NFL, it’s this determination, Hey, I want to go out and be a great player,” Steichen continues. “He’s been on record saying he wants to be a great player, and you do that by working every single day, and that’s what he’s been doing. It’s been really good to see. I’m excited about him and the future. But we gotta keep stacking the days, and growth’s gotta keep coming.

“It’s really just all about consistency, not making the same mistake twice, learning from our mistakes and keep going.”

So, again, there’s a long way to go. But this’ll be a fun one to watch.

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Herbert signed a record-breaking five-year contract extension worth $262.5 million :: Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports

The Justin Herbert extension created a cool moment for the Chargers’ organization. The deal was agreed to on the team’s veteran report day, and quickly, mostly on their phones, Herbert’s teammates found out about the record-breaking, five-year, $262.5 million extension. And when coach Brandon Staley addressed Herbert in front of the team, the guys tried to get him to give them a speech—he said he’d save it for later.

Then, on Wednesday, Herbert signed the contract in front of the fans, got goody bags from his teammates (like you would at an 8-year-old’s birthday party) and a Gatorade bath, before breaking the team down. Oh, and he was also electric during that first practice.

“Since I became head coach until now, you really see the evolution of a franchise quarterback, a guy who’s accomplished so much as a young player, but a guy who’s improved so much, too,” Staley told me over the phone Sunday. “Everyone that’s in this facility today, when you think of Justin, you don’t think of the guy that can just make every throw; he can do some things that are special that anyone who’s played that position hasn’t been able to do. We don’t think of him in that way. We think about him as a great teammate, and the face of our team in terms of how we want to lead and how we want to compete.

“I think [about] how much he’s improved. I told the team this: There’s nobody that cares more about this team than Justin Herbert. There’s nobody that loves the game more than Justin Herbert. He shows it every single day. Our guys just have this incredible belief in him. I’m just very happy for him."

And as for where Herbert will take all this next, that, to Staley, is the exciting part.

Because of who Herbert is, Staley thinks the deal will wind up looking better and better as the quarterback gets older and more experienced.

“To watch that evolution has been special,” Staley continues. “He’s the guy that can make our team get to the place that they haven’t been. There’s unanimous feeling in everyone here. We’re putting in all the right work around him. His teammates, on both sides of the ball and in the kicking game, fully embrace him. I think definitely in minicamp he just really took control of this thing, took charge of this team. I think that the respect that contract shows, it’s that natural evolution of a franchise quarterback.

“This isn’t changing him one bit; it’ll bring out the best in him. And we’re seeing it so far in training camp.”

That’ll be fun to watch, too, I think, with Herbert working with new offensive coordinator Kellen Moore and a loaded group of skill players around him.

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Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and Kevin O’Connell deserve credit for their handling of veteran players this offseason. The Vikings’ GM and coach knew full well coming out of last year’s 13–4 campaign that some financial house-cleaning was coming. We dove into that back in June, and it’s taken discipline to stick to the plan after the success those guys had with last year’s group.

I think what’s gotten them through all of this is pretty simple: It’s how they’ve treated people.

The list of players facing a contractual reckoning, in one way or another, wasn’t short—Harrison Smith, Dalvin Cook, Eric Kendricks, Adam Thielen, Danielle Hunter and Patrick Peterson were on that list. And in each case, the Vikings were up front in what they were willing to do with the player and allowed the player to explore his value elsewhere, if he wanted to.

It led to a few guys winding up gone in March (Kendricks, Thielen, Peterson). It led to another coming back on a reduced contract (Smith). It led to more of a dragged-out process in a couple of other cases (Hunter, Cook). And in the end, just two of the six guys I listed are still around—Hunter worked out a raise that was agreed to over the weekend.

But the long-term benefit, to me, is significant. Young foundation pieces such as Justin Jefferson and Christian Darrisaw, who’ll soon be playing on massive contracts, saw the way the organization treated respected veterans who were on the back nine of their careers and may not have quite fit into the coach and GM’s plans the same way they did under the previous regime. And the respect those older vets got, I’d bet, will resonate with the younger guys and engender investment and trust from them.

To me, this isn’t a complicated thing. But in a league that can often be pretty cold, it is an important one.

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Story I liked this week that slipped under the radar—Eagles CB Darius Slay detailing how he signed off on Matt Patricia’s arrival in Philly. Most of you know how rocky things were between the two in Detroit (if you don’t, Google it). But what a lot of folks didn’t know before this week was that, while working on hiring Patricia, Eagles coach Nick Sirianni arranged for the two former coworkers to talk.

“We talked about it during the offseason,” Slay told the Philly media this week. “They called me, and I was like, It’s cool with me because I want to do what’s best for the organization. I always tell guys, We’re in a rented seat. Nobody’s in this seat forever. So I said, Y’all got to do what’s best for the organization, and they asked if I would be cool with it, and I said yeah.

“Me and him talked man to man. We’ve got a great understanding. We both want to win. He’s here to help me get better. He wants to get better as a coach, so we’re in good hands right now.”

What I loved about this is, first, how Sirianni dealt with it up front and didn’t let it become a problem behind the scenes. That, in turn, showed Slay respect and opened Slay up to burying the hatchet. Patricia, for his part, wanted to get it taken care of first, too. So all the way around, everyone can move forward.

And by the way, Patricia is still a really good defensive coach and has proved that in being an invaluable resource to new coordinator Sean Desai (the two are pretty like-minded), and he’ll get the benefit of getting to see a different way of doing things, being in Sirianni’s program.

All of which makes this an everyone wins sort of situation.

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Hackett took most of the blame last year for the performance of the Broncos and Wilson :: Christopher Hanewinckel/USA TODAY Sports

Nathaniel Hackett’s getting more blame than he deserves for Denver last year. And this is coming up because I do think Sean Payton’s criticism was way over the top, which the Broncos’ coach has conceded since.

Here’s the thing—Russell Wilson was always going to have things like he did last year.

I believe that he, Rodgers, Deshaun Watson and others saw what the Buccaneers gave Tom Brady in 2020 (not monetarily, but in how the organization was set up), saw the result of it and implicitly said, I want THAT. For Wilson, that meant getting to have influence over every piece of an operation. It meant playing in a pass-happy offense. It meant having an office and his people in the building. It meant getting everything he was denied in Seattle.

We now know what that added up to, and the fallout from it is why Denver had to get a coach who could stand up to the quarterback (remember, they also interviewed DeMeco Ryans and Jim Harbaugh). And the collateral damage in all of that was Hackett.

Now, I’m not saying that Hackett will be Bill Belichick if he gets another shot at being a head coach. But the guy didn’t all of a sudden lose his ability to coach and teach in 12 months time. There’s a reason why Matt LaFleur hired him, and why Aaron Rodgers grew close to him, and why so many people wanted to interview him in 2022, and it’s not just that he’s got No. 12 on speed dial.

A year ago Hackett was seen as one of the brightest, most creative offensive minds in the sport. And, obviously, you can’t erase what’s happened since.

But he’s got a lot of good years in front of him, and my bet would be that’ll be obvious soon.

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I’ve got some thoughts on Cook and the Jets. This could get done quick, so we’re going to give you some bullet points to chew on.

1. This is important for New York in large part because of Breece Hall—and how having Cook will allow them to be careful bringing their stud rookie of a year ago back slowly from his torn ACL.
   
   
2. And, sure, maybe they would’ve been judicious anyway. But that wouldn’t have been easy, not through a season where it’ll feel like every week counts (because when you’re in an all-in year like this one, every week does).
   
   
3. Other teams heard this is where Cook wanted to land all along.
   
   
4. And that’s a benefit to having Rodgers and makes this much like when guys such as Rob Gronkowski, Kyle Rudolph and Leonard Fournette flocked to Tampa to play with Brady.
   
   
5. One thing I’d heard Cook was asking for was guarantees into a second year of a potential deal, and it’ll be interesting to see whether he gets it.
   
   
6. This kicks a leg out of the Jets’ division rivals in New England and Miami, both of whom had shown interest in Cook (the Dolphins actually had trade terms for Cook worked out in March with the Vikings before getting cold feet).

Oh, and this should spice up the premier of Hard Knocks, too, if you’re into that kind of thing.

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The Joe Burrow and Jalen Ramsey injuries raised more questions with coaches. The Bengals dodged a bullet; the Dolphins didn’t. But in both cases, you had players going down with noncontact injuries during the acclimation period, and I know having talked about it to a few coaches this week that there are a lot of questions on the right way to ramp players up for the rigors of camp and ultimately the season.

So, then, I’d ask these coaches what the right thing is, and the answer I’d get is that they really, truly don’t know. Most lean hard on their sports science people to try to get the right results. I know a couple of teams use a color-coding system to set up their calendar by intensity of practice to try to best protect their guys as the work gets harder.

But the reality here is that everyone is doing their best, and no one has all the answers.

That, and also there’s a pretty wide spectrum of approaches to the early parts of camp, under increasingly stricter rules on contact and pace. Which says, to me, that the best way to get to the best answers is through trial and error, and teams pooling information (a lot of them already do) to try to get the best results.

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Commanders fans are charged up since Josh Harris bought the team. They also have a new quarterback in Sam Howell, who will start this year.  :: Geoff Burke/USA TODAY Sports

Best sight of the early stages of camp—all the excitement in Washington. I think everyone now sees the sleeping giant that Josh Harris just bought. All it took was Dan Snyder selling the team to bring it out. An estimated 10,000 fans were in Ashburn, Va., for Saturday’s practice, and that was after the team drew crowds of between 2,500 and 4,000 fans Thursday and Friday.

So I called Ron Rivera on Sunday to ask him what it felt like out there, after all the franchise has been through the past few years.

“The biggest thing it shows, more than anything else, the fans were always there,” he says. “They just didn’t show up all the time, but they were behind us. And now, having the opportunity for them to come back out and be around the players, it was really cool for our guys to see what this could potentially be like.”

Here’s the key to what Rivera said: With a fan base that once had a decades-long season-ticket waiting list—which is to say, if these guys win—look out.

“Man it’s incredible,” new Commanders tackle Andrew Wylie, who came from Kansas City, told reporters Saturday. “They’re loud, they’re enthusiastic. A lot of the guys that have been here are shocked. This is not what they’re used to. This is incredible. It just goes to show the fans are there. They want to believe in something.”

Of course, now it’s up to Rivera & Co. to give them more.

But regardless of how the season goes, it’s crystal clear there’s really something for Harris, a native son of the area, and his group to build on.

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The season’s here, and that means the quick hitters are back. Here we go …

• The Seahawks’ running back situation bears watching, with both Kenneth Walker III and Zach Charbonnet already nicked up. But I wouldn’t sleep on Kenny McIntosh, the rookie from Georgia. While he had a tough combine and pro day, there’s ability there, and he should’ve gone much earlier than the seventh round.

• It’s good to see Justyn Ross getting a real shot at Chiefs camp. You’ll remember him as the true-freshman star of the 2018 national title game with Clemson—a guy who, at the time, seemed to be trending toward the first round of the draft. Injuries killed his college career thereafter, but some of that ability is coming out in Kansas City’s practices. We’ll see where he takes things.

• One thing Bears folks kept talking about when I was there was the burgeoning relationship between Justin Fields and DJ Moore. I saw it on one particular play on which Fields rolled right, in a red-zone drill, and hit Moore on the move in a window about as wide as a phone book, with corner Kyler Gordon in tight coverage—one of those good-on-good situations that you file away this time of year.

• Matthew Judon’s hold-in, if that’s what it is, is a worthy one. He’s the Patriots’ best player and he’s making half of what T.J. Watt is getting paid. He’s also 30, so it makes sense for him to try to strike while the iron’s hot. And paying him would send a nice message to New England’s locker room, with a guy who’s done everything right since signing there.

• Great to hear Kim Pegula is back at Bills practice.

• One thing that a couple of scouts brought up to me in my travels—how they feel like the Jaguars absolutely stole Calvin Ridley. It came up, of course, because Ridley’s generated some buzz in Jacksonville’s camp. But I can say even independent of that, the peers of Jags GM Trent Baalke feel like he did real well on that one.

• It sounds like the new Cardinals coaching staff is getting a nice level of engagement from Kyler Murray, who’s learning a totally new offense for the first time as a pro. Remember, Kliff Kingsbury’s offense was a lot like Lincoln Riley’s (Kingsbury’s working for Riley now at USC), which eased Murray’s adjustment to the pros in 2019.

• Based on all I’ve heard and seen, I’m excited to see Bijan Robinson in person this week.

• Fair to say there’s a lot of pressure on Xavien Howard to regain his old form this year, with Jalen Ramsey out until December.

• Love the Eagles’ kelly greens. And they only confirm what I’ve always known—that I grew up in the golden age of sports uniforms.