The Colts have given Jonathan Taylor permission to seek a trade, which feels like a longer and more frustrating route toward finding the same conclusion: teams don’t value the position in a way that will ever be satisfying to running backs (even though their total value versus the cap has not plummeted over time), which means the Colts will have an impossible time finding both just value in return and a partner club that will facilitate a top-of-the-market extension once the trade is consummated.
Taylor is essentially going through the regular human equivalent of waiting on hold for 45 minutes in order to find out that, yes, indeed, like your internet service provider texted you, the telephone pole is still down and so we have no way to provide you with a means to stream Beef.
I’m not saying that Taylor shouldn’t go through the motions. Everyone should always try. Who knows? Maybe some startlingly bad injury sparks a misfired neuron inside the brain of a desperate general manager and Taylor, like Le’Veon Bell before him, gets a decent payday. Bell will forever be the patron saint of running backs who caught someone in a stage of [insert cool foreign language word for a complete and total mix of distress, organizational pressure and confusion here]. I am saying that he will likely end up as personally miffed and frustrated as he is now. Perhaps there will be some newly conspiratorial energy on the next running back union Zoom call.
