Jonathan Taylor’s Search for a New Team Is a Doomed Mission

The Colts’ running back is highly unlikely to find a trade partner willing to part with heavy draft capital to sign him to a lucrative extension.

The Colts have given Jonathan Taylor permission to seek a trade, which feels like a longer and more frustrating route toward finding the same conclusion: teams don’t value the position in a way that will ever be satisfying to running backs (even though their total value versus the cap has not plummeted over time), which means the Colts will have an impossible time finding both just value in return and a partner club that will facilitate a top-of-the-market extension once the trade is consummated.

Taylor is essentially going through the regular human equivalent of waiting on hold for 45 minutes in order to find out that, yes, indeed, like your internet service provider texted you, the telephone pole is still down and so we have no way to provide you with a means to stream Beef.

I’m not saying that Taylor shouldn’t go through the motions. Everyone should always try. Who knows? Maybe some startlingly bad injury sparks a misfired neuron inside the brain of a desperate general manager and Taylor, like Le’Veon Bell before him, gets a decent payday. Bell will forever be the patron saint of running backs who caught someone in a stage of [insert cool foreign language word for a complete and total mix of distress, organizational pressure and confusion here]. I am saying that he will likely end up as personally miffed and frustrated as he is now. Perhaps there will be some newly conspiratorial energy on the next running back union Zoom call.

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After leading the NFL in rushing yards in 2021, Taylor posted career-worst marks across the board last year while missing six games due to injury :: Mykal McEldowney/USA Today Network

In looking across the league, one might argue that the only teams able to even take on a project this financially involved are teams that either already have good running backs, already got rid of an expensive running back or, like the Bengals, for example, have a boatload of money they’re saving to give to a bunch of people who aren’t running backs (and have already financially squeezed their running backs). Searching for a trade partner will only serve to confirm for Taylor what his current co-workers have been trying to tell him.

Perhaps Taylor saw the writing on the wall and chaos is his only option. Shane Steichen, the Colts’ head coach, had more useful running backs earmarked for different roles in Philadelphia than just about any team in the league. The Colts don’t have the same level of depth, but may be moving in that direction organizationally, which could hamper Taylor’s efforts in getting an extension down the road. Taylor also watched Saquon Barkley get stiff-armed by the franchise tag and knows it’s coming.

Perhaps Taylor saw Ezekiel Elliott and Dalvin Cook signing with other teams and thought that this was his time to hit the market completely solo. The Colts don’t have a better option remaining on the market with which to threaten Taylor; at least not one who won’t soon be collecting the running back equivalent of social security.

Perhaps (most likely) Taylor is getting bad advice and severely misreading his hand. I’m not sure how much the Colts will miss a running back when they just drafted a Derrick Henry-sized human being to throw footballs and run zone read.

If this sounds pro-Colts, forgive me. It’s just pro-reality. Todd Gurley and Christian McCaffrey were able to knife open the running back vault thanks to a mix of good representation and a situationally advantageous market. Taylor is coming off an injury-marred season and the Colts believe they have two first-round picks, a second-round pick and a third-round pick invested in an offensive line that should be the difference maker between a good and average running back; not the back himself.

On top of that, according to an ESPN report, they’ve told teams only a first-round pick, or a handful of picks that would match the total value of a first-round pick, will get the deal done. That is, essentially, the kiss of death. No general manager will want to be the second guy who comes up under the Google query: Colts+Running Back+Trade+First+Round+Pick (no offense to Trent Richardson or anyone else involved). The 49ers gave up half a draft’s worth of players for McCaffrey following a bidding war for his services near the trade deadline.

And so, it seems, we are headed for an awkward impasse while Taylor waits for the hold music on the other line to end. If I were him, I wouldn’t count on someone picking up. At least not before everyone—the running back hoping to tear up his rookie deal, the team looking for a first-round pick and a league enjoying the surplus of the most replaceable position in the marketplace—starts to adjust their perception. What are the odds of that happening?