Jonathan Taylor

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• Camp · Aug 23, 2026Aug 23, 2026

  Jonathan Taylor Camp Update — August 23: The Full Bubble Wrap Treatment

  Jonathan Taylor sat Saturday's preseason loss with the rest of the starters and generated no new reporting all week — the handling a team gives a back it just paid. His first live snaps may come in the Detroit finale, where Steichen says starters will play.

• Camp · Aug 16, 2026Aug 17, 2026

  Jonathan Taylor Camp Update — August 16: The Extension Backs the Role Bet

  Indianapolis announced a contract extension for Jonathan Taylor in the middle of training camp. The June case rested on the role being the trustworthy part of his profile, and the franchise just put its own money on the same side.

• 2026 PreviewJun 12, 2026

  Jonathan Taylor 2026 Season Preview — the market is paying for the wrong stat

  Taylor's RB2 finish rested on volume that has tracked him across seasons — the kind of role-based opportunity that tends to repeat. His 20 half-PPR points per game over 17 games show a workhorse deployment, and at 81.2% availability across 2021–25, durability has held up more often than not. Whether the touchdowns that supported that per-game average recur is the real question, since scoring rate is the least stable input in any running back's profile.

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  Show notes & transcript

  Jonathan Taylor is the seventh pick in fantasy drafts right now. And his 18 rushing touchdowns — the most in football last year — are exactly why that price is wrong. They're also exactly why somebody in your league will happily pay it. This is the Muffed 2026 preview: what he did, what repeats, and what you should actually pay for.

  Start with the season he had, because it was magnificent. 20 points a game — the number two running back in football, per game AND in total, and that symmetry matters: no padded ranking, no soft stretch. 323 carries — the most in the NFL — for 15 85 at four-nine a pop. 18 rushing scores. 46 catches on top. 17 games, zero missed. And the efficiency held under all that weight: +195 rushing yards over expected, fifth-most in football. The defining day was Week 10 against Atlanta — 32 carries, 244 yards, three scores, including an 83-yard touchdown with the game on the line. A 49 point fantasy eruption. That's the full resume: volume, efficiency, touchdowns, health.

  Now zoom out, because here's where it gets interesting. This is year six for Taylor. And we have seen this exact season from him before — almost line for line. 20 21: 20.8 a game, RB2, 18 rushing touchdowns, a third of his fantasy value from scores. 20 25: 20 even, RB2, 18 rushing touchdowns, a third of his value from scores. He is the only back this decade with two 18-rushing-touchdown seasons. Nobody else has even done it twice. And what followed the first one? 12 a game. RB18. Now — honesty, because that's the house style: 20 22 was also an ankle injury and a quarterback carousel. The collapse wasn't pure touchdown regression. But the climb back tells you what his non-touchdown baseline looks like: 14 and a half, 16 and a half, and then last year, when the scores came home again, 20 even. The touchdowns are the tide in this career.

  So let's decompose what actually repeats. 10 years of data, every back in football. Carries repeat — volume is identity, and 323 carries with no competition for the role is as safe as workload gets. The receiving game repeats and his is growing — 46 catches was a career high, up from the upper-thirties in his best years. That's the part of this profile quietly getting better. But touchdown share? Touchdown share is weather. Taylor's 33 percent — a third of his points from trips to the paint — puts him in the top quartile of touchdown-dependent backs, and that group, across a decade, falls off by three points a game the following season. Not sometimes — on average, and it holds in both halves of the decade. Take 20 even, subtract three, and you're at 17: sixth-best-back production. Excellent. Just not what pick seven is paying for.

  The situation, briefly — and this part the data can't model, so we'll just say what's known. Indianapolis re-signed Daniel Jones on a two-year deal back in March, and the rehab news has been good: per the June reports he's progressed to seven-on-seven work coming off the December Achilles, and the stated expectation is that he's ready for Week 1. Taylor, for his part, showed up to minicamp talking about being a Colt for life, still without the extension. How it cuts hasn't changed: a healthy Jones means the same top-10 rushing environment that produced all those goal-line trips. A slow tendon means loaded boxes and a touchdown environment that sags. You're not just drafting Taylor's legs — you're drafting that recovery.

  So, the price. Pick seven, the fourth back off the board, as of our July first snapshot. That price pays for a top-four repeat — for the 18 touchdowns coming home again. Our verdict, and it's a real call: overpriced. Not a fade — a price correction. The honest counter-argument, out loud: the workload is bulletproof, the receiving role is growing, and if anyone's built to outrun a base rate it's a 27-year-old bell cow with no backup in sight. The role is real. The touchdowns are rented. Pay for the role.

  What to watch once September comes: his share of the carries inside the five — that's where 18 touchdowns either reload or don't. The catches — if 46 becomes 55, the floor rises and this call weakens. And Daniel Jones's legs, literally. If he's one of your guys, this show exists for your whole roster — every player, every week, all season.

• 2025 ReviewMay 11, 2026

  Jonathan Taylor 2025 Season in Review

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  Show notes & transcript

  Jonathan Taylor finished 2025 as the number 4 running back in total PPR scoring and the number 4 running back in PPR per game — and the symmetry tells you everything. This wasn't a guy who padded his ranking with one monster outlier or rode a soft early schedule. Taylor was the engine of an Indianapolis offense that won eight games, carrying a true bell-cow workload from Week 1 through Week 18. He led the entire NFL in rushing touchdowns. When the league leader in scoring runs anchors a top-10 rushing attack, the fantasy ranking isn't a surprise — it's the inevitable output.

  Now let's dig into the numbers. Taylor handled 323 carries for 1,585 yards at 4.9 a pop, 18 rushing scores, plus 46 grabs on 55 targets for 378 yards and two more touchdowns through the air — 17 games, zero missed time. The efficiency holds up under the volume: plus 195.1 rushing yards over expected on the season, plus 0.6 per attempt, eighteenth among qualified runners. He's not just being handed easy yards by his line — he's adding real value on his own. And the consistency is where Taylor separated from the boom-or-bust crowd at the position. He averaged 21.3 PPR points per game, and outside of three single-digit clunkers he was a double-digit lock every week, with seven games north of 23 points and four above 30. Rare floor. Genuine ceiling. That's how you finish top-four in both total and per-game scoring.

  The defining swing came in Week 10 at home against Atlanta, Colts down one inside the final seven minutes. Second and two from their own 17, Taylor took a handoff up the middle and ran 83 yards to the house — the single most valuable play of his season by expected points, flipping a one-point deficit into an overtime win. He finished that game with 32 carries for 244 yards and three rushing touchdowns, a 49.6-point eruption that anchored the whole fantasy season. One play, one game, a perfect snapshot of Taylor in 2025: volume, explosiveness, and touchdowns at the goal line. He didn't just smash — he led the league in scoring runs while doing it.