Why I’m Running Back The Jonathan Taylor Fade In 2026

Doubling down on one of my biggest misses in 2025 (no way this could possibly go wrong, right?)

Fading Jonathan Taylor was admittedly probably my single worst stance of 2025. While he tailed off at the end of the season due to changes in his circumstance (Daniel Jones going down with injury), he was pretty undeniably a top 3 value in all of fantasy last year. He was the RB1 with a ludicrous 23.3 FP/G prior to Jones’ injury from Week 1-13, despite coming off drafts boards as the RB10 in later round 2.

Despite getting burned, I’m putting my balls on the table and running this fade back in 2026. At a significantly more expensive cost than in 2025, I think a lot of Taylor’s concerns that had me out on him last year still linger this year. We’ll get more into this below, but he has a lot of red flags for me as a round 1 pick in fantasy. Check out my exposure on JT through 201 Underdog best ball drafts below, via my best ball exposure tool.

I’ll likely be a good bit lower than this 2.9% exposure, as I’ve grown less fond of JT throughout the offseason. I’m aiming to be closer to like ~1.5% by the time drafting season ends. Let’s get into why, but before we keep going:

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The 2025 Runout

So let’s start with what went wrong for us in 2025. Frankly, I boil the miss down to two (2) major points. First being, I certainly underestimated the raw talent of JT after a couple of down-in-production injury-ridden seasons. JT had shown an incredibly high ceiling in the past, both on a single-game and season-long basis (RB1 in 2021). He was a proven explosive and top-of-NFL talent whose poorer performance was pretty heavily correlated to when he was dealing with injury (same right ankle issue three years running). In every season he played in 12 or more games up until this point, he posted a minimum of a 5.5% explosive rate, 1,500+ scrimmage yards, and 12+ total TDs. To discount the possibility of returning to this elite form at just 26 years old was admittedly a miss.

To defend my thought process here though, I do think it was quite valid to assume that a player declining in production and efficiency for multiple years (regardless of injuries dealt with) while entering the back nine of his career is relatively unlikely to bounce back in such a major way. Overcoming not only a multi year dip in performance, going from 6.7% explosive rate and 5.3 YPC in 2020-2021 all the way down to a 4.5% explosive rate and 4.5 YPC in 2022-2024, but a previously poor receiving role and an expected poor offense (discussed just below here) seemed like a pretty massive uphill battle for a round 2 fantasy pick to climb.

The second and really the thing that ultimately burned us here, and this one was out of nowhere, was how strong this Colts offense was overall. Going into the season, the Colts were projected for the 26th most PPG based on implied points per game using preseason betting odds. They blew that projection out of the water while Jones was healthy (Wk1-13), leading the ENTIRE NFL in points per game… just shy of 30 PPG. They were also top 2 in both EPA/Play and success rate in this time, genuinely one of the best offenses in the NFL. As we know, environment is ever so important to RB production and scoring opportunities, especially for an RB we know isn’t going to turn in elite receiving production. The Colts environment allowed Taylor to flip this perceived negative into an overwhelming positive, easily leading the NFL with 17 TDs through just 12 games (13 weeks).

We saw what happened when the offense performed closer to expected late in 2025, as JT was just the RB25 in FP/G (12.1 half PPR FP/G) for the last 5 weeks of the season (small sampled, admittedly).

So, this may come off as cope, but I’m completely fine with my fade on JT in 2025. It was wrong in the end, but I think the process was more than sound. Taylor hit on several outlier outcomes last year, including returning to talent/play level we hadn’t seen in multiple years (since 2021) AND his offense massively outperforming expectation. On top of both of those, Taylore more than doubled his receiving role from the prior 2 seasons (19 then 18→46 REC, 153 then 136→378 rec yards), something we don’t often see occur for an already established RB. Three semi-correlated but ultimately separate outliers coming together at once for this type of season is something I’m willing to consistently bet against.

Why Am I Doubling Down In 2026?

So now the question arises: Why am I avoiding JT again in 2026?