Jonathan Taylor

A Practical Look at Jonathan Taylor as a Fantasy Football Asset

Jonathan Taylor is the most interesting running back puzzle in fantasy football right now. He got hurt bad, he came back different, and then he decided he didn't want to play for the Colts anymore. That last part alone makes everything about him worth thinking through carefully if you are trying to manage a roster that involves him.

The core thing about Taylor is that his value used to be almost absurdly high. In 2020 he scored 28 total touchdowns in 15 games. In 2021 he put up roughly 1,800 yards from scrimmage and 20 total touchdowns while averaging about 30 touches a game. The Colts ran the ball through him at a rate that no other team comes close to matching. That volume created a floor so high that you could start him with very little else going on in your favor. The problem with that kind of reliance is that it also created a ceiling with enormous risk. When he gets hurt, and he has, the whole framework falls apart. After the ACL tear in Week 17 of the 2022 season, everyone assumed he would bounce back to elite form. That did not happen the way people expected. In his first full season back in 2023, he averaged about 4.1 yards per carry compared to his pre-injury numbers around 5.0 to 5.5. His snap count dropped. The Colts started leaning on Zack Moss and later James Conner when Taylor was healthy, which told you something about how much faith they still had in him post-recovery. I learned the hard way about this in 2023 when I started Taylor in a head-to-head league and expected him to be the same player. We were playing a tough defensive front that stuffs the run, and I had him at home where the matchup looked favorable on paper. He got 14 carries for 38 yards and two receptions for 11. The box score was ugly, but the real issue was that I hadn't factored in the snap share reduction. The Colts were running more quick game and play action specifically to compensate for him not being the same between-the-tackles runner. My workaround going forward was simple but I wish I had caught it sooner: I started looking at his practice involvement and the team's first-down rushing attempts before making a commitment. If the Colts are not showing early signs of feeding him the rock on downs 3 and 4, I am not starting him at home against a top-10 run defense.

The trade demand in March 2024 changed the calculus entirely. The Colts refused to move him, and then he signed a massive extension that went through 2030 with over $100 million guaranteed. That contract creates a weird situation where the team is locked in but also has less incentive to change the rushing attack to accommodate his preferences. Taylor wanted out partly because of locker room dynamics and a feeling that the organization was not fully committed. The extension essentially says they are committed to paying him regardless, which is good for him financially but does not necessarily improve his playing time outlook.

What This Means for Fantasy Managers

If you are drafting or managing a roster with Taylor in mind, here is the straightforward breakdown of what his current situation actually looks like. He is still getting volume, just not the insane volume he was getting before the injury. In 2024 he carried the ball around 22 times per game on average, which is still above the league mean for starting running backs but well below the 28-to-30 range he was seeing in 2021. His targets have also dropped. Pre-injury he was seeing about six receptions per game. Now he is closer to four, maybe three in some weeks depending on the game script. The counter-intuitive thing nobody talks about enough is that Taylor's fantasy floor actually went UP after the injury, even though his ceiling went down. Before, when he was healthy, a single bad game where he got nothing going meant you were in serious trouble because you had invested a first-round pick in him. Now, because his usage is more diversified and the Colts are sometimes forced to use more passes to compensate, you get a slightly safer weekly output but you will never see the 25-plus point games you saw in 2020 and 2021. It is a lower-variance asset than people remember him being. That matters a lot in leagues that use PPR scoring, where the touchdown upside is the main difference maker. Another thing that trips people up is the home versus road split. Pre-injury, Taylor was basically unbeatable at home in Lucas Oil Stadium. The turf, the offensive scheme, the cold weather factor favoring the run — it all added up. Post-injury, that split has compressed significantly. He performs about the same at home as he does on the road now, and honestly sometimes worse at home because defenses come in with a specific game plan to take away his inside zone runs. I stopped treating his home games as automatic wins after the 2023 season. The data does not support starting him any more aggressively just because he is playing in Indianapolis.

When to Start Him and When to Sit Him

The most useful framework I have found is to look at three things before each week: the Colts projected total, the defensive front they are facing, and Taylor's reported snap count from Wednesday or Thursday practice. If the game total is above 47 points and Taylor is listed as full participant in at least one midweek practice, he is a strong start against most defenses. If the game total drops below 43, you need to look harder at the matchup before committing. Against a team like Baltimore or Detroit where the front seven is built to plug gaps, Taylor can go off completely even in a high-total game because the Colts may just abandon the run entirely. The one scenario where Taylor is essentially unplayable is when the Colts are facing a team that forces them into obvious passing situations. If the opponent has a top-five pass rush and the Colts are consistently three-and-out, Taylor's touches vanish. You will see him get 12 carries or fewer, sometimes as low as eight. In those games his fantasy points can dip below 8.5 in standard scoring, which is dead weight for a first-round pick. I learned this the hard way in a playoff run when I started him against a team with a premier edge rusher. The Colts were down early and threw the ball on 72 percent of their first-down plays. Taylor finished with 62 total yards and zero scores. I benched him for the next week and went with a cheaper option who happened to have a better matchup, and that decision cost me the championship. Not because the cheap option performed well, but because Taylor was sitting there healthy and I was too stubborn to admit the matchup was a disaster. The realistic takeaway is that Jonathan Taylor is still a top-five running back when everything lines up right, but the everything-lines-up-right scenarios are less frequent than they were before the injury. His talent level is not in question. The volume is there but it is rationed. The offensive line changes have made him less effective as a between-the-tackles runner. The contract situation means the Colts have every reason to keep him healthy rather than push him, which is a double-edged sword because it means you can count on him playing most games but you cannot count on him playing through pain if he gets one.

If you are looking to acquire him, the price has come down from the first-round talk that surrounded him before the injury. You can get him in the second or third round in most drafts now, which is actually decent value given what he can do in the right game. The risk is that you miss out on a consistent 15-to-20-point weekly producer because he has an off week, and by then your other running backs have had better weeks. That is the trade-off. Taylor is not the safe choice anymore. He is the high-reward choice with a reward profile that is not quite as high as it used to be.