Jonathan Taylor is heading into the final year of his contract with the Indianapolis Colts and he is making sure the front office knows where he stands.
“I want to be a Colt for life,” Taylor said this week. He has now publicly said the same thing in three different settings over the past month. The 27-year-old running back wants an extension before the start of the 2026 season, and he wants to play out his entire career in Indianapolis.
Whether the Colts feel the same way is the question.
Taylor is on a 3-year, $42 million contract that he signed in 2023 to end his holdout. The deal was a compromise between a star running back who wanted top-of-market money and a franchise that did not want to break its salary structure for a running back. Two seasons later, both sides have something to consider.
What Taylor has shown is that he can stay healthy and produce. He has rattled off back-to-back 300-plus-carry seasons. He led the AFC in rushing yards twice over the contract. He is the engine of an offense that just made the playoffs and is one of the dark horses for the AFC South title in 2026.
The Colts have to decide whether they extend him now or wait. Taylor will be 28 when the 2026 season ends. He will be a free agent at 28 if no deal gets done. That is the wrong age to let a running back walk. By then, his trade value is at zero and his future earning power has already started to compress.
The market for running back contracts is also moving in his favor. Saquon Barkley got $20 million per year on his Eagles deal. Christian McCaffrey is around $19 million. Bijan Robinson and Jahmyr Gibbs are about to become eligible for monster extensions. Running backs are not paid like they were five years ago, when the position got nothing.
Taylor would be looking at something in the $18-22 million per year range on a three-year deal with significant guarantees. That is real money but it is not franchise-altering. The Colts have plenty of cap space and plenty of need at running back beyond Taylor.
The smart move is to extend him now. The Colts have a young quarterback in Anthony Richardson who they are trying to develop. A reliable run game is the best development tool a young quarterback can have. Taylor’s value to Richardson, and to the franchise’s playoff hopes over the next three years, is significant. Letting him hit the open market is a great way to lose him to a team like the Cowboys or the Jets.
The risk on the team side is age. Running backs hit the wall fast. Taylor has put a lot of mileage on his body. The 300-carry seasons that just put him in the Pro Bowl conversation are also the seasons that tend to cause running backs to fall off a cliff at age 29.
The Colts are taking the wait-and-see approach for now. The front office has reportedly told Taylor’s camp they want to focus on the upcoming season rather than locking up contracts mid-summer. That is corporate-speak for “we’ll see how the body holds up before we commit.”
Taylor is going to make it hard for them to wait. He has been the model citizen since the holdout ended. He is durable. He is productive. He is saying all the right things publicly. The longer the Colts wait, the more pressure builds on them to do the right thing by their best skill-position player.
If the Colts let Taylor walk, they will spend three years trying to replace him. They should just pay him.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
