Taylor didn't just have a good 2025, he had a Pro Bowl, top-2-in-fantasy-scoring season behind only Christian McCaffrey. A league-high 323 carries turned into 1,585 rushing yards and 18 rushing touchdowns, and he tacked on a career-high 46 catches for good measure. That's not a bounce-back campaign, that's a guy operating at the absolute peak of the running back position, and there's zero evidence in Indy's offseason moves suggesting anyone's coming for his workload.
Draft Market
Shane Steichen has talked up depth pieces like Seth McGowan and DJ Giddens this camp, and the running backs coach floated a 'lighter workload' storyline that beat reporters have already dismissed as offseason noise. Steichen himself admitted it's hard to take Taylor off the field when he's running like that. Translation: expect the same bell-cow usage until something forces a change.
The swing factor for 2026 isn't Taylor, it's Daniel Jones. Jones is working back from a torn Achilles and is the unquestioned QB1 entering camp, with Anthony Richardson and Riley Leonard fighting for the backup job. If Jones is fully healthy and the offense functions the way it did late last season, Taylor gets the same runway. If Jones misses time, Indy's offensive line and scheme still lean on the ground game hard enough that Taylor's touch share probably survives the transition better than most bell-cow backs would.
Award Markets
There's also a contract cloud hanging over this. Taylor is in the final year of his deal, set to make just under $12 million in base salary, and has publicly said he wants to be a Colt for life. The Colts haven't shown urgency to get a new deal done, and this exact situation blew up into a two-month camp holdout back in 2023. Worth watching, but even that saga didn't sink his fantasy value once it resolved. It's noise until it's not.
The market data lines up almost too neatly here. ESPN ADP at 8.3 and climbing, crowd ADP even tighter at 7.8, and 99.7% rostered says the fantasy community has fully priced Taylor as an early first-round lock. But the Kalshi numbers tell a slightly different story, just 6.5% to finish RB1 and ranked twelfth by that market, with rushing yards and rushing TD leader odds sitting around 11.5% each. That's a market hedging on touchdown regression and injury risk from a guy who's dealt with recurring ankle issues, not a market that doubts the talent.
RB Board
Split the difference and you get the right read: draft cost and prediction-market skepticism aren't actually contradicting each other, they're pricing different risks. The ADP crowd is betting on the floor, which is elite and well-earned. The Kalshi crowd is betting against the ceiling, since finishing outright RB1 requires touchdown luck on top of volume. Both can be true. Take Taylor comfortably in the back half of round 1, treat him as a top-5 fantasy back, but don't be shocked if the actual RB1 crown goes to someone with more receiving upside. Draft at cost, don't reach past pick 6 or 7 for him.
