Jonathan Taylor’s agent pours gasoline on embers of Colts RB’s looming exit

Jonathan Taylor’s agent and Jim Irsay are not playing nice on Twitter, making the Colts running back look even more likely to leave Indianapolis.

Jonathan Taylor, like all NFL running backs, wants to get paid the big bucks. And it increasingly looks like he’s going to have a hard time achieving that.

Contract negotiations on long-term deals this offseason didn’t go well for Saquon Barkley or Josh Jacobs. Taylor will be in a similar situation next offseason…and Colts owner Jim Irsay may not be in a position to bring the running back around on a new deal after pissing off his agent.

Irsay tweeted this on Wednesday evening:

"“NFL Running Back situation- We have negotiated a CBA,that took years of effort and hard work and compromise in good faith by both sides..to say now that a specific Player category wants another negotiation after the fact,is inappropriate. Some Agents are selling ‘bad faith’..”"

Malki Kawa, Taylor’s agent, hit back: “Bad faith is not paying your top offensive player.

When Ian Rapoport tweeted about finding a way to fix the relationship between Colts ownership and the agent, Kawa was skeptical.

“I doubt it,” Kawa tweeted.

https://twitter.com/malkikawa/status/1684625972497178624

Jonathan Taylor’s exit from Colts looks all but certain after 2023

Even if the relationship between Taylor’s agent and the Colts was as good as could be, we’d be best off predicting that Taylor will leave Indianapolis before long.

Taylor has been a workhorse for the Colts over the last three seasons. But that’s the problem. Running backs are being run into the ground during their relatively cheap rookie deals without cashing in on lucrative second contracts.

Running backs are still important in this era of the NFL. But star running backs are no longer seen as worth paying. Teams have figured out that they can win with running backs on rookie contracts, like the Chiefs with Isiah Pacheco last season, or a committee of cheap rushers, like the Rams the year before.

Teams that have dished out big contracts for running backs entering their late 20s haven’t exactly had success to point to in recent years. That’s working against Taylor, his agent and all the other running backs waiting on their next deal.