Insider: How do Colts maximize Jonathan Taylor's impact without overworking him?

INDIANAPOLIS — The NFL’s best running backs have always been haunted by the spectre of injury.

Nobody handles the ball more, or takes more hits without being able to deliver their own blow. The more times a running back touches the ball, the harder it is to avoid major injury.

More: After historic season, Jonathan Taylor's game-worn jersey is headed to the Pro Football Hall of Fame

The ones who somehow outrun the medical tent become the best of all-time. From Jim Brown to Walter Payton, on down through the Barry Sanders-Emmitt Smith rivalry and all the way to LaDainian Tomlinson, the best runners in NFL history have often been the ones who were able to avoid losing most of a season to major injury, who somehow fought off the physical toll until they’d carved their names into history.

For the first time since Edgerrin James roamed the Indianapolis backfield, the Colts have one of the NFL’s best backs.

Jonathan Taylor led the NFL with 20 touchdowns and 1,811 rushing yards, 552 yards more than any other back and made first team All-Pro by unanimous vote. Taylor’s 2,980 rushing yards through his first two seasons are the seventh-most of any running back in NFL history.

“The guy is tremendous,” Colts general manager Chris Ballard said. “And I don’t think we’ve seen the best of him.”

Taylor can only live up to Ballard’s lofty projections if he stays healthy.

The Colts have to pay close attention to the weight of the workload Taylor is asked to carry. Indianapolis handed Taylor an NFL-high 332 carries in 2021, a high number that managed to fall just shy of the age-old standard of 20 carries per game.

But the number of carries Taylor was getting down the stretch represented the sort of workload that can cost a running back dearly if carried out over a full season.

Taylor was handed 136 carries, 27.2 per game, over a five-game span that stretched from the beginning of Thanksgiving week to Christmas night. The Colts’ budding superstar carried the ball 192 times, or 24 times per game, in the final eight weeks of the season.

If Indianapolis leaned on Taylor that much over the course of a full season, the Colts would be tempting the so-called “Curse of 370,” a term coined by Aaron Schatz, now the driving force behind Football Outsiders, the cutting-edge analytics web site. Based on Schatz’s historical research, a running back who either approaches or clears the 370-carry mark in a single season is almost always headed for a drop-off in effectiveness the next season.

The latest victim of the curse was Tennessee’s Derrick Henry, who carried the ball 378 times in his 2,027-yard campaign in 2020 and was on pace to shatter Larry Johnson’s NFL record of 416 carries in 2021, only to break his foot against Indianapolis at the halfway point and miss the rest of the regular season.

As much as the Colts believe in Taylor’s talent, Indianapolis is fully aware of the dangers of riding its superstar into the ground.

“The volume did get so big at the end,” Ballard said. “I don’t think it wore him down, but it’s something we’ll keep an eye on, make sure we’re balancing out his carries over time.”

Taylor, for his part, seems to spend almost every waking moment trying to stave off the inevitability of his position.

Johnathan Taylor hasn't missed a game due to injury

Famously devoted to training and recovery, Taylor hasn’t missed a game in college or the NFL due to injury so far — he missed one game as a rookie because of a COVID-19 close contact — and he wants to keep it that way as long as possible.

“It’s really tough,” Taylor said. “A little bit of luck, and a little bit of preparation.”

Already a physical prototype for the position with his combination of 230-pound strength and the fastest play speed in the NFL, Taylor has devoted his offseason work to injury prevention, training to isolate muscles that don’t get stressed as much in the normal course of a football workout.

Taylor firmly believes those muscles and joints often end up becoming injury risks, and with that in mind, he’s long been a devoted Yoga and Pilates practitioner, along with massage and other recovery techniques. During his first two seasons in the NFL, Taylor has become known in the Colts running backs room for working on his body while paying attention in meetings.

“I like to call it risk mitigation,” Taylor said. “Doing certain things in the offseason and throughout the regular season, whether it’s pilates or whether it’s yoga, just trying to get your body in certain positions. … A lot of times, injuries happen when your body moves into a position it’s unable or it’s not used to moving.”

Before Taylor left the Colts facility at the end of the regular season, he made his way around the locker room, asking different veterans what they planned to do this offseason, in case there’s some training regimen he can add to what he’s already been doing.

But the responsibility for keeping Taylor healthy and maximizing his prodigious talent rests on the Colts as much as on Taylor himself, if not more. Taylor is in such remarkable condition that Indianapolis made veteran back Marlon Mack a healthy scratch 10 times last season, even though the preseason plan was to give Mack a handful of carries each game.

Taylor simply doesn’t take himself off the field.

“Never gets tired,” Colts head coach Frank Reich said of Taylor at one point in 2021. “Never needs a break.”

Will Taylor get a break?

The history of the position suggests that Indianapolis might need to give Taylor a few more breaks next season anyway, and that might mean a few more carries for other backs.

But it doesn’t sound like Indianapolis will prioritize finding another pure runner capable of spelling Taylor. The Colts gave satellite back Nyheim Hines a three-year, $18.6 million extension at the end of training camp, and it sounds as if Indianapolis is comfortable using Hines as the change of pace going forward, along with undrafted rookie Deon Jackson.

Hines had his best season as a runner in 2021, averaging 4.9 yards on 56 carries; Jackson got his feet wet with 13 carries for 31 yards and a score.

“Nyheim’s pretty good, even when he carries it,” Ballard said. “And we’ve got another young kid, Jackson, who we like. Showed real promise.”

Hines has handled a heavier workload as a runner before. In both the 2018 and 2020 seasons, Hines broke the 80-carry mark, a number that could help the Colts keep Taylor’s carries within reason next season.

Whatever the solution, Indianapolis needs to keep Taylor’s workload in mind going forward.

Taking one of the best players in the NFL off the field every once in a while might seem counterintuitive.

But it might help the Colts keep Taylor on the field in the long run, chasing the sort of greatness only a few running backs have ever been able to achieve.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Jonathan Taylor: How can Colts maximize ability over the long haul?