INDIANAPOLIS — The garage sale has officially begun, the lawn chairs are out, and the most valuable thing on the table is a two-time Pro Bowl running back who still has two years left on his contract and an owner who would rather not talk about it.
The Colts, per league insiders, are now considered more likely than not to be sellers at the NFL trade deadline, which falls on November 10, and coverage of the team’s teardown has turned, inevitably, to Jonathan Taylor — one of the most productive runners since he entered the league in 2020, re-signed in August to a two-year, $44 million extension, and now listed, in the language of the market if not of the building, like a beloved car the family is thinking about selling for the last time.
Against him: the owner. Carlie Irsay-Gordon has said she does not want the Colts to trade Taylor, a statement that tradesmen recognize instantly as the sentence an estate sale begins with.
THE SALE, ITEMIZED
- Lot 1: franchise running back, 27, two years and $44M remaining, minor wear, sentimental value noted by seller
- Buyer's market: playoff contenders short a between-the-tackles game
- Seller's motive: draft picks for a rebuild described by insiders as impending
- Owner's objection: on the record, tender, and non-binding
- Sale concludes: November 10, sharp
The fans have responded the way fans respond to everything: by attending.
At a bar on West Maryland Street, a season-ticket holder named Dale Prewitt, who has watched the Colts turn four quarterbacks into a memory, graded the situation with the calm of a man who has survived a decade of Tuesdays. “They’re not selling the furniture,” Prewitt said. “They’re selling the room the furniture was in. You just keep the lamp.”
His companion, an accountant named Stacey Vaughn, disagreed, passionately. “You don’t trade a guy who ran for everything twice. You trade the coach who keeps needing him.” Vaughn said she had already decided what she would do if the trade happens, then declined to say what she had decided.
What makes the Colts’ position funny rather than grim is the sequencing. The extension was signed in August, an act teams perform when they have decided a player is the future. The rebuild is being called impending, the name teams give the present once they have decided the extension was about resale value. Both statements are true simultaneously. That is the central miracle of the modern roster.
A Colts spokesperson said the team does not comment on speculation and does not comment on its own comments about speculation. Taylor, reached after practice, said he doesn’t control any of it, said he loves Indianapolis, and said it twice, unprompted, in the way of a man informing the record that he has been informed.
At press time, the Colts had not traded their running back. The deadline is November 10.