Opinion: Don't be scared, Colts fans. You can start thinking playoffs after Jonathan Taylor's masterpiece.
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- It’s quiet deep inside Highmark Stadium, where the Indianapolis Colts have just battered the Buffalo Bills, 41-15. It's quiet where reporters are waiting to talk to the NFL’s hottest team, stoked by the hottest running back, but not anymore.
Now you can hear it, dozens of voices coming through the wall from the Colts’ locker room, rising as one to celebrate the most unthinkable day of this most unthinkable season.
One! Two! Three! Four! Five!
They’re counting in there, tallying the touchdown total of Jonathan Taylor, who has just produced one of the finest games in NFL history by a running back: 32 carries for 185 yards and four touchdowns; three catches for 19 yards and another TD. Taylor now leads the NFL in rushing yards (1,122), rushing TDs (13) and total TDs (15), and he leads all three categories by a significant margin. He has produced those numbers in just 11 games, playing at a historical level that challenges everything we’ve come to believe about the NFL's Most Valuable Player award.
Quarterbacks win MVP, and only quarterbacks. That’s how it’s been 13 times in the last 14 years, and every year since Vikings running back Adrian Peterson won in 2012. That's a compelling case against Taylor’s candidacy, but not as compelling as this:
The Colts’ record in 2021 when Taylor runs for 100 yards: 6-0.
Their record when he does not: 0-5.
The push for the postseason is just getting started. The Colts, after beating a likely playoff team for the first time all season – and blowing it out, on the road – have more games to win. Taylor has more games to reach 100 yards. The MVP award is out there for the taking. So is a spot in the 2021 NFL playoffs.
What was it coach Frank Reich was saying after the Colts had beaten lowly Jacksonville last week? Oh, right. This:
“There's a lot of good teams in the AFC,” Reich had said, “but no one's just taken over. So why can’t it be us?”
Last week, people laughed.
Hear anyone laughing now? All I hear is the sound of grown men celebrating in another room.
Jonathan Taylor making history
It’s not just the number of touchdowns he scored Sunday, though that number is ridiculous. Five? Seriously? Guys do that in high school all the time. They do it in college, sometimes. They almost never do it in the NFL. The game’s just too hard up here, the talent too deep, the bar too high.
Taylor got his five TDs, tied for the fourth-most by a player in NFL history, and it's the way he did it. Like his second touchdown, a 23-yard pass from Carson Wentz. First, the play was brilliant. Reich gets a lot of heat for the way he calls games, but he draws up plays with his finger in the dirt, just weird stuff, outrageous. On this one, Reich has No. 1 receiver Michael Pittman Jr. run a route to the right, and he has electric scatback Nyheim Hines faking a handoff to the right, and he has Wentz rolling to the right, and he even has All-Pro left guard Quenton Nelson pulling to the right.
There goes Taylor to the left, open in the flat, catching Wentz’s throwback pass. It’s underthrown, so Taylor has to stop at the Buffalo 12 and spin for the catch as Bills defensive back Taron Johnson flies past. Now Taylor is taking off, accelerating like a Lamborghini, beating two Bills defenders to the end zone with an escort from tight end Jack Doyle.
Or how about his third touchdown, that 2-yard swan dive into the end zone? That’s the way Billy Sims used to do it when he was winning the 1978 Heisman Trophy for Oklahoma and reaching Pro Bowls in Detroit. Speaking of Sims, he’s one of just 10 players in NFL history to run for 1,000 yards and score 10 TDs in each of his first two NFL seasons.
Oh, wait. Make that one of 11 players. Taylor joined the list on Sunday.
And how about that fourth touchdown? Ridiculous. Well, wait. The play before the touchdown? That was ridiculous:
The Colts are leading 24-7 but they’re greedy, and so is Taylor, and he’s just gained 40 yards to the Buffalo 10. He muscles out of a tackle attempt at the line of scrimmage by 6-3, 307-pound Bills defensive tackle Harrison Phillips, then hesitates at the 30 and high-steps past safety Jordan Poyer before being forced out at the 10.
Next play – you’d think he’d be tired, but he’s not – Taylor takes the handoff up the middle and immediately cuts left. Two things here: One, his vision. Yeah, he’s strong (5-10, 226 pounds) and fast (borderline world-class in the 100-meter dash), but he has the patience and vision of Le’Veon Bell, minus Bell’s narcissistic baggage. The other thing: The Colts’ offensive line has been opening huge holes for Taylor. The hole isn’t always exactly where the handoff is directed, but Taylor has the patience and vision to find it.
So on his fourth touchdown, this 10-yard run, Taylor sees the hole to his left and hits it, then makes an even harder cut to his right, leaving Bills cornerback Levi Wallace alone in the rain at the 10.
The stiff-arm of safety Micah Hyde, pushing his face into the turf at the 5, almost seems gratuitous. Like, haven’t you embarrassed these people enough, JT?
Taylor's TDs ... plus those turnovers
It’s not just Jonathan Taylor, either.
He’s the biggest reason for the Colts’ surge in the last six games. They’ve gone 5-1 – and Taylor has run for at least 100 yards and scored 10 touchdowns, total, in those five wins – but the defense is something else, too. Before the season, the Colts' D set a laughable goal of 40 turnovers, laughable because no NFL defense has done that since 2012 as passing games have evolved into a series of shorter, safer tosses. The last Colts defense to record 40 turnovers? Way back in 1987. Peyton Manning was in sixth grade.
Can’t laugh anymore, not with the Colts producing at least one turnover in every game this season and ratcheting up their pace Sunday with four. The prettiest of their three pickoffs was Kenny Moore’s volleyball tap to himself, and this wasn’t a happy accident. He did it on purpose, after Xavier Rhodes tipped Josh Allen's pass into the air. Moore was nearby, but so was wily Buffalo veteran Emmanuel Sanders. Moore saw Sanders and tipped the ball the other direction, to himself, where he grabbed it and returned it 14 yards to the Buffalo 24.
The Colts lead the NFL with 12 forced fumbles, thanks to one-man wrecking crew Darius Leonard, and now are fourth with 13 interceptions. They’re tops in the league with 25 turnovers forced, putting them on pace for 36 in a 16-game schedule, and 39 with the NFL playing 17 games in 2021.
It’s Taylor and the turnovers, and it’s also the rise of rookie defensive end Kwity Paye, who forced a fumble – Buffalo recovered – on a sack of Josh Allen. That was Paye’s third consecutive impactful game, when he has totaled both of his 2021 sacks and all five of his quarterback hits. It’s Michael Pittman Jr.’s emergence as a No. 1 target (57 catches, 752 yards and five TDs), and Carson Wentz’s care with the ball (18 touchdowns, just three interceptions).
And it’s Reich’s reliance in recent weeks on a running game that is second in the NFL in yards per carry (5.17) and third in yards per game (147.9). With Reich leaning more on Taylor, Wentz has gone from averaging 264 passing yards per game in the first five games (the Colts went 1-4) to 186 yards in the last three (the Colts went 3-0).
Add it up, along with the perfection of new kicker Michael Badgley – 9-for-9 on field goals, 24-for-24 on extra points – and this is complementary football at its finest. Like, turning offense to defense. The Colts scored three TDs after turnovers Sunday, adding to their league-leading total of points off takeaways. That tally is 98 after Moore’s volleyball interception set up Taylor’s fifth touchdown, a boring little 1-yard run where all he did was hit linebacker Tyler Matakevich in the hole and drive the 6-1, 235-pound cinder block from Buffalo into the end zone.
Yeah, that was Taylor’s most boring TD of the day. The bar’s high.
The bar’s high for the Colts now, too. Not so long ago, they needed just to win a game or two, give fans a reason to return to Lucas Oil Stadium in November. Well, they’ve done that. The Colts have gone from the potential No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 NFL draft to prime position for a 2021 playoff spot.
They’ve done it by riding the NFL's best running back, leaning on its most opportunistic defense and winning this many of the last six games:
One, two, three, four, five.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.