Insider: Colts star Jonathan Taylor answers critics with brilliant, gutsy performance

INDIANAPOLIS — A lot of stuff has been said about Colts running back Jonathan Taylor this season.

He’s been called selfish. A bad teammate. Reluctant to play through injury.

People have questioned his value, his long-term viability, whether he’d ever be able to impact a game the way he dominated the NFL in that magical 2021 season.

But there was Taylor on Saturday night, trotting back out of the locker room and onto the Indianapolis sideline, pacing back and forth like a gladiator ready to be unleashed, refusing to give in to the pain coursing through his ankle.

Taylor had already willed the Colts back into the game, strapped them to his back and hauled his team into a game that looked like a mismatch for most of the first half.

He nearly carried them into the playoffs.

“It’s days like today where you realize you need a J.T.,” Colts quarterback Gardner Minshew said. “He’s that kind of guy. He kept us in that ballgame by some of the amazing stuff he was doing.”

One final play call, Shane Steichen’s ill-fated decision to call for a Minshew swing pass to Tyler Goodson, took Taylor off the field and took the game out of his hands. A game, and a playoff spot, Indianapolis ended up losing 23-19 when Minshew’s underthrown pass slipped behind Goodson, turning him around and sent the season glancing off his fingertips.

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Without Taylor, the Colts wouldn’t have been in the game at all.

“I didn’t see the final stats, but shoot, he ran it hard,” Steichen said.

Taylor’s final stat line was sublime.

Thirty carries, 188 yards, a vintage 49-yard touchdown run that tied the game and gave the Colts a chance.

But this Taylor performance was about so much more than the numbers.

This was Taylor’s answer to everything that’s been said about him this season. He’s rarely been the type to answer his critics with his words; Taylor prefers to sidestep the details, slip past the dirty laundry and focus his public attention on the future, rather than the past.

Taylor issued his rebuttal on the field Saturday.

Indianapolis hasn’t always needed him to be Superman this season, and he hasn’t always been able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, limited to just 10 games by his recovery from ankle surgery and then by a torn thumb ligament that wouldn’t allow him to grip the football. All of those injuries led to questions about his value, about the wisdom of the Colts finally relenting to Taylor’s contract desires and signing him to a three-year, $42 million extension.

When he was asked about any of those concerns, Taylor often responded by focusing on the process, rather than issuing a full-throated defense of his skills, although he did seem to let a little frustration with that storyline slip in the postgame locker room Saturday night.

“Everyone’s asking, ‘Hey, when are you going to break a long run?’” Taylor said. “Every single play, you try to execute it to a tee, at a high level. You never know which play is the play.”

Taylor proved he’s still special on Saturday night.

Facing off against a Texans defense that entered the game ranked second in the NFL in yards allowed per carry at 3.3, Taylor responded by shredding the unit, darting into holes, setting up the defense to lean one way and then jump-cutting the other, creating explosive plays behind a reborn offensive line.

By the time Taylor burst free over the left side and followed an Alec Pierce block into the end zone for that long touchdown run so many people wanted to see, it was clear that only his body could stop him.

And it almost did.

Taylor headed to the locker room at the end of the third quarter with an injury that was announced first as a heel, then as an injured ankle, and the Colts declared the running back doubtful to return. When an NFL team says a player’s doubtful, he almost never returns.

A handful of people have questioned Taylor’s desire to play hurt this season.

Not anymore. Not after he returned to the sideline, then carried the ball nine times in 11 plays on a clearly balky ankle on the the drive the Colts hoped would send them to the playoffs.

“You had to dig deep,” Taylor said. “We knew it was going to be a physical game. Both teams are fighting for the same thing, so everything we talked about, all the conversations we had, how bad we want it. … They did, too.”

Taylor didn’t say much about the pain he was battling, but he was clearly compromised; Taylor’s signature jump cuts and change-of-direction weren’t the same on that series.

“Nothing compared to walking off the field with the loss. We fought through a lot this year to get right there. Shoot, we scratched and we clawed to get to that moment. You want to wrap it up and put a bowtie on it, because you did so much to get there. That’s like getting to Christmas, and Santa didn’t bring you any gifts.”

Taylor’s eyes welled up in his post-game press conference, clearly emotional about the loss.

He wants to win badly. When the Colts have been down to their last chance, he’s often been at his best in his Indianapolis career. Taylor has played in three do-or-die regular season finales in his career; he has produced 75 carries and 518 yards (6.9 yards per carry) in those games.

Despite that emotion, that track record of coming up big in critical moments, a player some have called selfish over his contractual desires refused to place the blame on Steichen for taking him out on the game’s critical play, even though he wanted the ball in his hands.

“Definitely, but no one second-guessed any of Shane’s calls,” Taylor said. “All year, he’s been a masterpiece working.”

When the locker room cleared and almost everybody else had left, Taylor was still in the locker room, still wearing his game pants.

He hadn’t showered yet.

Taylor had held his post-game press conference, then sat at his locker with Goodson and Zack Moss, talking about the game, long after the rest of the locker room had headed home. All season long, Taylor’s championed his fellow running backs, sung their praises.

And in the worst moment of Goodson’s career, he was still there, staying with the young running back, talking about a game Taylor’d nearly won by himself.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts RB Jonathan Taylor answers critics with brilliant, gutsy game