Coming in to his rookie season with Indianapolis Colts, Jonathan Taylor found himself in a timeshare in the Indianapolis Colts backfield. Thanks to an early injury suffered by Marlon Mack, Taylor slowly found more and more time as the guy in the Colts backfield. Although he only ran for over 100 yards in three games, Taylor found himself finishing the season with 1,169 rushing yards, which was good enough for third among NFL running backs, giving him a great fantasy football season.
Going into his sophomore season, the question remains whether or not the Colts will continue to use a watered down version of a running back by committee approach to the running game. If so, Taylor will be pressed to replicate his success from the 2020 season. If he can find enough consistent carries however, the sky is the limit.
Let’s discuss Jonathan Taylor’s fantasy football outlook for 2021, including his stats from 2020 and giving our buy or sell decision based on his current average draft position (ADP).
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Jonathan Taylor Fantasy Football Outlook 2021
2020 Fantasy Stats
Games Played: 15
Fantasy Points (PPR): 271.2
Fantasy Rank: RB5
Boom%: 20%
Starter%: 80%
Bust%: 6.7%
Jonathan Taylor 2021 Outlook
For 2021, it seems like the Colts have finally solidified Taylor in the starting running back role for the Colts. While that does mean he will carry the bulk of the load, with Marlon Mack and Nyheim Hines held in high regard as well, they will surely be taking a good chunk of carries as well. As the season went on, it became more common for Taylor to get over 20 carries again, specifically in the last six games he played. It seems as if the Colts wanted to bring him along slowly before giving him the reigns completely, so he should see as much work as he did near the end of the season.
Injury-wise, Taylor doesn’t seem like much of a liability at all. He wasn’t hurt last season and didn’t have many durability issues during his time at Wisconsin either. Taylor has always been a workhorse. Consistency-wise he wasn’t great, but little of that was his fault. When the coaches call for you to get less than 15 carries in eight games, there’s nothing you can do to rack up fantasy points outside of taking every carry for 20+ yards.
Not only will the coaching staff likely give Taylor more reps as the starting running back, they have a fantastic schedule for him as well. This season, the Colts have the easiest schedule when it comes to opposing rush defenses. This, coupled with the extra reps and trust from his coaches, will undoubtedly end up with more production all else being equal.
Jonathan Taylor Fantasy Football ADP | Buy or Sell?
The ADP of Jonathan Taylor was taken from Fantasy Football Calculator on July 5th has him going eighth overall in 2021 fantasy drafts. At this ADP, I’d sell on Jonathan Taylor. While he will get more reps, I can’t trust this coaching staff to give him enough reps to warrant a first-round selection.
Taylor did have the third-most rushing yards among running backs, but this was mostly due to the fact that he ran for 253 yards on 30 carries in the last game of the season. Not only will that amount of touches be extremely uncommon, his yards per carry that game was 5.1. The most yards per carry he had across the rest of the season was 4.0. While that isn’t horrible, I’m going to put much more stock into his full season of work rather than the one week he exploded.
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