Colts reportedly extend Taylor to two-year deal
Mike Florio and Chris Simms react to Jonathan Taylor's extension with the Indianapolis Colts on the heels of Bijan Robinson's historic deal with Atlanta.
Video Transcript
We wrote something earlier this week in the aftermath of the Bijan deal.
I was hearing that Taylor was likely to get a two-year extension.
And when you have the Bijan Robinson APY and you slap it together with what Taylor is due to make, you can come up with a formula pretty quickly for what it's going to take.
And per multiple reports, it's a two-year extension for Jonathan Taylor worth $44 million.
So you're gonna add that to what he was already due to make and divide it by three, and that's what he's getting.
And he was due to make around 12, so it's going to be a strong APY.
It puts him at number two, just behind Bijan Robinson, and it secures him for the next three years with the Indianapolis Colts, and that's his second bite at the apple.
Most running backs are gonna get one big bite.
Yeah.
This is his second bite at the apple, and it feels fair to both sides.
It does, and it's great to see.
Jonathan Taylor is definitely one of the five best running backs in the sport.
We see that.
He was in the MVP conversation till about, what, week 13 last year?
And then the Colts just totally started to fall apart, and he couldn't do it.
He's still got a lot of wear and tear on the tire.
He's still a guy that can go 80 yards to the house from anywhere on the field, so he's special that way.
I'm glad to see him get rewarded.
It's, it's, it's funny because, I mean, you're like you said, yeah, he's, he's third contract here.
And the second one there was that, you know, little dust-up issue, and Jim Irsay, RIP to him, did not wanna maybe give him that second contract.
They do that, and then, you know, rightly so, they quickly, quickly reward him here for this third contract.
And, I'm happy to see it because, yeah, he's one of the, the most explosive players on the offensive side of the ball in the NFL.
Hey, this is a team that never gave Edgerrin James a second contract.
Yeah, right.
They, they rode out his rookie deal, they franchise-tagged him, and then they let him walk away to the Arizona Cardinals.
And, you know, for a lot of teams, when you draft a running back, the thinking is, "We're going to use the running back heavily and aggressively, and we're gonna see him through his full contract, and we'll tag him for a year if we have to, and then we'll move on and we'll draft another one with full tread on the tires who is younger and cheaper and, if we get the right guy, more effective."
So with Taylor, they realize they got a guy who's special and who has helped fuel that offense.
And we've seen, as you've said many times, the pendulum has swung back toward running the ball and the importance of a good running back.
So he gets his deal.
It could be worth up to 47 million, which would put it at 23.5.
But again, the base APY, which is all anyone cares about, the base APY, new money, 22, puts him just behind Bijan Robinson at 22.5.
Now again, it's just a two-year extension, three-year total deal, but it goes along with the deal that he signed three years ago, which I think was worth 14.
So it just shows you where the market has gone.
It still has a long way to go for running backs, but at least it is improving.
It's not going in the wrong direction.
No, that, that's right, and, and hopefully it continues to go that way.
For all the things you've stated about how important they are, r- how we've talked about how they're usually the most one of the two or three most physically gifted guys on a football team, i- it's good to see it happen.
And, this is an important subject to these guys, which it should be.
And like we heard with Bijan Robinson at the top of the segment, the, the running backs, and, and we've had these conversations before, they're all, like, on a group text together because they're been trying to, like, "How the hell are we gonna get respected again?
How are we gonna get more money again?
How are we gonna get paid, you know, the way we should?"
And hopefully them sticking together and, and kind of communicating that way, that'll help, along with the NFL starting to realize, "Yeah, these guys, these special ones, they're worth paying."
And Jonathan Taylor's one of them, and now we just wait for Jahmyr Gibbs, who I think one-ups everybody and gets the most money out of all of them.
That would be my thought.
And we'll see where that goes, but I, I hope that happens real soon.
