10/4 taylor articles indy star

[JAFF]

What does adding Jonathan Taylor to Anthony Richardson mean for the Colts?

INDIANAPOLIS — The possibilities are impossible to ignore.

For Jim Irsay, for Shane Steichen, for Anthony Richardson and the rest of the Colts, the prospects have only gotten more tantalizing through the first four weeks of the season, even with Jonathan Taylor on the reserve/PUP list.

The possibility of pairing Taylor and Richardson in the same backfield, forcing defenses to deal with a quarterback-running back tandem that could be the most explosive the NFL has ever seen.

“I dream about it,” Colts middle linebacker Zaire Franklin.

The dream might be a reality soon.


Inside IndyStar: Talking Colts football with reporters Nate and Joel

Taylor returned to practice this week — the fourth-year back was listed as a full participant for Wednesday’s walk-through — and the Colts haven’t ruled out the possibility of playing their superstar back on Sunday against the Titans, even though he hasn’t practiced with the team since last December.


Indianapolis has little concern about Taylor’s ability to pick up the offense.

“With OTAs and training camp stuff, being around … shoot, the system, obviously the verbiage stuff, he’s heard it all,” Colts head coach Shane Steichen said. “Obviously, he’s in the meetings getting ready today and all that stuff, so taking his notes, getting ready. With anything — obviously, he’s been around it — but any time you sign a player, you sign players on Wednesday that start on Sunday.”




If the Colts get Taylor on the field this week — and the Titans are reportedly saying they’re preparing for the running back to play — Tennessee’s defense will have tougher choices to make.

Veteran backup Zack Moss has ground out yards in Taylor’s absence, picking up 280 yards on 66 carries, a 4.2 average that has helped moved the chains. But he does not have Taylor’s history of breaking long runs, the runs that propelled him to an 1,811-yard season in 2021.


NFL defenses are obsessed with preventing the explosive play. When it is Richardson and Moss in the backfield, a defense can focus on Richardson, who is averaging 5.7 yards per carry and has already ripped off a handful of explosive runs in his first three starts.

Ignoring Taylor in favor of the quarterback comes with bigger risk.



“When you have an explosive player like him in the backfield that can hit the home runs, obviously, you might get heavier boxes,” Steichen said.

Boxes that can help open up a passing game that was far too dink and dunk for the first three and a half games of the season. Forced to play a string of defenses -- the exception being Baltimore -- that sit back in a shell and try to make teams throw underneath, the Colts were averaging roughly 5.8 yards per attempt through the first 14 quarters of the season, a number far beneath Steichen’s goal.

Then Richardson got hot against the Rams, hitting Mo Alie-Cox, Alec Pierce and Josh Downs on the kind of plays that open up the offense.

“You create explosive plays offensively, your percentage of scoring goes way up,” Steichen said. “When we started hitting those chunk plays last week, we started scoring points. Any time you can create thos explosive plays, it’s going to help.”



Taylor can help create explosive plays in a lot of ways.

With the ball in his hands, with the threat of the ball in his hands pulling safeties into the box and out of coverage, and by taking attention away from Richardson, who already has four rushing touchdowns this season.

Richardson, like everybody else, has wondered about the possibility of pairing his talents with Taylor. He grew up, like a lot of other football players, watching Taylor at Wisconsin, then watched Taylor tear up the NFL two years ago in Indianapolis when the Colts star established himself as the best back in the league.

Taylor and Richardson haven’t been on the field together at full strength yet, the product of Taylor’s ankle injury and contract dispute with the Colts, but it hasn’t kept Richardson from wondering what it might be like playing with him.

“I know he’s a great player, and I know I can do some things pretty well,” Richardson said. “Trying to combine those two things, I can only imagine what it’s like, but we won’t see until it actually happens.”



The Colts haven’t ruled out the possibility that it could happen this week.

The position Taylor plays is easier to build chemistry with the quarterback than a receiver.

“I don’t think it takes too long,” Richardson said. “It’s pretty simple just handing the ball off, knowing where to step. It’s also learning the running back; also learning how he wants the ball given to him, how he wants the passes thrown to him. Maybe a couple days.”

And then Steichen and the rest of the Indianapolis offensive staff can start feeling out the talented duo at their disposal, getting a feel for how defenses will try to stop a combination of two players with power, blinding speed and excellent agility.

A combination that could be devastating.

“I know he is a dog, and I know he is going to fight for yards and get us yards,” Richardson said. “Hopefully, that can open up the passing game for us.”

[JAFF]

Doyel: Wayward Colts RB Jonathan Taylor is back at the Colts complex, ducking the media

INDIANAPOLIS – It’s been so long, not to mention so weird, are we even going to recognize wayward Colts tailback Jonathan Taylor? Maybe not. Maybe it’s already happening. Allegedly he was at the Indianapolis Colts’ 56th Street complex Wednesday, the day he was said to be rejoining the team, designated to return soon from the Physically Unable to Perform list.

It has been a while since we’ve seen the guy on the field. Taylor last practiced in December before injuring his ankle, requiring surgery that generally sidelines a player for about a month. That was what, 10 months ago? And he’s been unable to return, while asking for a new contract the whole time?

Probably a coincidence.


Colts coach Shane Steichen opened his news conference Wednesday by announcing Taylor was in the building and would attend the team’s walk-through, which is a whole other thing. NFL teams on a normal week – and this is a normal week for the Colts, at least according to the schedule – don’t do a walk-through on Wednesday. They practice on Wednesday. But had the Colts practiced, NFL rules stipulate a portion of it has to be open to the media. And you know those jackals. Always taking pictures and video and the like.

So far, pictures and video of Jonathan Taylor are like pictures and images of the Loch Ness Monster: grainy and weird and from some lake in Scotland, or wherever Loch Ness is located. Maybe Taylor is in Scotland? I’d ask Colts coach Shane Steichen, but he’d probably say he’s had conversations about the location of Loch Ness, and they’ve been good, but he’s going to keep those conversations private.


“I’ve had good conversations with him,” Steichen says of Taylor, or maybe the monster; he wasn’t clear, and it’s not your place to assume. “Myself and him, I’ll keep our conversations private, but they’ve been good.”

Pretty soon Steichen is finished talking and we’ve asked him 10 different questions about Taylor and I’ve written down every single revealing word and my notebook is blank. So now we’re heading into the locker room.


First stop: the lockers on the immediate left. That’s where the running backs are located, closest to the door, to allow Taylor to make a quick getaway next time he pouts his way onto the PUP list or Injured Reserve or the I’m Just Here Because My Agent is Stupid list.

No Taylor.


For the next 45 minutes I’ll be staking out the location, when I’m not teasing Sam Ehlinger or charming Gardner Minshew or – be serious here – congratulating Ryan Kelly on his newborn twin sons. Over the next 45 minutes I’ll see every running back on that row: Zack Moss (locker No. 21), Trey Sermon (No. 27), Jake Funk (No. 34), Evan Hull (No. 26), even someone named Tyler Goodson (No. 31).

Well, every running back but the guy at locker No. 28.

Maybe the Loch Ness Monster ate Jonathan Taylor?

Is that ... no, it's Quenton Nelson

Then again, are we going to recognize Taylor? His hair could be longer, his body thinner, his scowl scowlier. He’s been hard to recognize in other ways, four years after he arrived from Wisconsin so sweet and unselfish and happy and honest.

This new No. 28, this new “Jonathan Taylor,” is surly and selfish and angry and maybe even dishonest, the way his surgery generally requires a four-week recovery period but dragged into training camp, the preseason schedule and the first four weeks of the regular season – at the exact same time he and his agent were whining on social media for contract extension.

Probably a coincidence.

Doyel in August: Colts don't trade Jonathan Taylor, so we're stuck in nightmare of his creation

It was a mostly routine Wednesday scene in the locker room, with quarterback Anthony Richardson doing his weekly news conference at his locker as teammates walk by and cartoonishly notice the scrum, eyebrows raised for effect, like that’s original or something. Better to be like Quenton Nelson and walk by with a blank stare, as if the media isn’t worth his time. That’s how you do it, Big Q!

Wait.

Anyway, another card game is breaking out at the lockers of the defensive backs. Someone’s being inappropriately loud and you don’t even have to ask to know it’s cornerback Tony Brown, whose nickname is unfortunate and I won’t write it here, but you have to say it with his full name and it sounds like Hazy Tony Brown.

Only, not "hazy."

Am I being clear?

Move on. There are more sights to see on this normal Wednesday as we stake out Taylor’s locker, where only a handful of practice shirts hang from hangars. No street clothes in his locker. And he’s here? Really? Maybe he comes to the complex already dressed for practice.

Maybe he practices in street clothes.

Colts news:Want to dress up as Jonathan Taylor for Halloween? This is what it'll cost you

Is that ... no, it's Gardner Minshew

Evan Hull is here, and he’s injured. Like, the real thing, not that anybody would fake an injury. For sure, nobody in this locker room has been faking an injury, and I’m not saying that just because Taylor isn’t here.

Hull is wearing a turquoise skull cap for reasons known only to him, with a bulky brace on his surgically repaired left knee, and crutching slowly around the room. He visits his locker, where he shares a word with No. 31, Tyler Goodson. Pretty sure it’s Goodson, though I wouldn’t recognize him.

Maybe Tyler Goodson is Jonathan Taylor.

Down the way are the quarterbacks, where No. 3 QB Sam Ehlinger tolerates my series of lame dad jokes until he finds some reason to get away from me. Today Ehlinger is followed by a skinny guy with long brown locks flowing from beneath his baseball cap, and maybe that’s Jonathan Taylor? As I said, he could’ve lost weight. He could’ve grown out his hair.

Whoever he is, he’s pulling on a red non-contact jersey, which would make sense for anyone injured or even pretending to be injured, and there’s a name on the back of the jersey and … oh, that’s backup QB Gardner Minshew. Now I’m telling Ehlinger to pay attention, because he’s about to see how small this big ol’ world can be.

“Gardner!” I shout at Gardner, who looks at me like he’s never seen me in my life, which briefly makes me wonder if I’m Jonathan Taylor. I’ve been waiting months for this conversation with Minshew, and here it comes.

“I went to Oxford Elementary with Ilya,” I tell Gardner, naming a kid from my Mississippi childhood named Ilya Minshew. “And he’s your … well, what is he? Your cousin?”

“That’s my uncle,” Gardner says of Ilya. “That’s my guy.”

Moving away from Gardner, I spot another of my Mississippi connections. DeForest Buckner’s dad played for Ole Miss when I was a kid there, and I can still picture George Buckner – No. 33 – dunking on someone. This gives me a special connection with DeForest, so I approach to ask him “for something thoughtful and intelligent about Jonathan Taylor’s return.”

DeForest thoughtfully and intelligently tells me, “I speak on Thursdays.”

That’s fine. Our locker room access is ending after 45 minutes anyway, no sign of No. 28. Everyone says he’s here, so I'll assume he is. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say he's just cowardly ducking reporters.

All I can tell you is, on my way out to the parking lot, someone was on that tiny pond on the Colts property, next to that tiny golf course. Whoever was on the pond, he was doing maintenance of some sort. Long hose, water coming out of it. What’s he doing, watering the water? That’s the kind of thing Taylor’s agent would advise his client to do.

Maybe that was Jonathan Taylor, floating on that pond in a small craft, what you call – wait for it – a jon boat.

[Racehorse]

I'm not shocked that Doyel can't tell the difference between a huge white guy (Nelson) and a short black guy (Taylor)