Coming up with a way to describe the best running back in football, maybe the best player in football, isn't as easy as you might think.
Most descriptors feel like empty platitudes, words that fall short of the gravity required to explain what we're seeing.
Of course Jonathan Taylor is great. Of course he's remarkable. Of course what he's doing to opposing defenses is preposterous. We all know this.
We all saw what he did in the Colts' 38-14 win over the Tennessee Titans on Sunday, with three more touchdowns, punctuated by an 80-yard dash up the near sideline that was as jaw-dropping as it was unsurprising. If that makes sense.
Of course Taylor could and would do something like that 80-yard dash, on which he made safeties Xavier Woods and Amani Hooker – who didn't even take all that bad of angles toward him – whiff on tackle attempts like they were five-year-olds trying to hit a Nolan Ryan fastball. Those defenders had Taylor mere inches from the Colts' sideline, and even as Taylor tiptoed to stay in bounds, he managed to continue accelerating, hitting a top speed of a touch over 21 miles per hour on his way to the end zone.
"I feel bad for anybody that has to go against him," safety Cam Bynum said.
Maybe the best way to describe Taylor in 2025 is inevitable. He is an inevitable football player in that, at some point in a game, it's become inevitable that he'll make a game-changing play. He has 14 touchdowns in eight games; five entire offenses haven't reached the end zone that many times through Week 8.
(If you're wondering, those teams are the Titans, Las Vegas Raiders, New Orleans Saints, Atlanta Falcons and Cleveland Browns.)
"It's hard to put into words, to be honest, because when you see the way he's running, the way the guys are blocking for him, I mean, it's special," head coach Shane Steichen said. "It really is. And like I said, he's running hard. He's running physical. Even when things aren't clean in there, he's finding ways to get three, four (yards) and then the 80-yard touchdown run – he hit that thing down the sidelines, and to stay in bounds, it was as impressive as it gets."
Taylor, on Sunday, turned in one of those games no one in the stands at Lucas Oil Stadium will ever forget – seriously, if you were there on Sunday, you'll no doubt remember the crescendo of decibels as 60,000 people realized he was going to score an 80-yard touchdown. But he had that unforgettable game while touching the ball just 14 times – tied for the 11th-fewest touches he's had in any of his 75 career games.
He finished the game with 153 yards on 12 carries with two receptions for 21 yards with a touchdown; that receiving touchdown came on a pop pass from quarterback Daniel Jones. In total, that's 174 yards on 14 touches, good for 12.4 yards – more than a first down – each time he touched the ball.
Taylor said one of his goals for 2025 was being more efficient and explosive with limited touches, knowing the wide range of playmakers the Colts' offense can tap into in any given week.
"We got a lot of players making plays," Taylor said. "So everybody going to get the ball, and that's what makes us so lethal. So what can you do, how efficient can you be when your number's called?"
Taylor has been, through eight games, as close to an unstoppable force as there is in the NFL. But there's a looming immovable object, one that doesn't matter for the Colts' win-loss record, but does matter for how we'll be talking about what Taylor's doing.
The chants of "M-V-P" from the stands at Lucas Oil Stadium were thunderous on Sunday. Steichen and the Colts' sideline both heard and noted them.
"Validated," Steichen grinned. "Validated."
"I think those were spot on," Jones added.
But the last dozen MVPs have been quarterbacks. No running back – not Saquon Barkley, not Christian McCaffrey, not Derrick Henry – has received even a single first-place MVP vote since the Los Angeles Rams' Todd Gurley got a handful of tallies in 2017. The league's MVP, fair or not, has become the domain of its best quarterbacks, those with the last name Allen, Jackson, Mahomes and before them Brady, Rodgers and Manning.
"I know that they like to give it to quarterbacks," wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr. said, "but he's playing at such a level where they're gonna have to consider a non-quarterback this year."
Taylor, though, doesn't aspire to be an MVP candidate through Week 8. There's still 10 more weeks and nine more games left this regular season; he'll cross the halfway point of 2025 in the visiting locker room of Acrisure Field at halftime of the Colts' game against the Pittsburgh Steelers next week.
The goal for Taylor and the Colts is to keep winning, to keep building on this 7-1 start, to not just earn the Colts their first playoff appearance since 2020 but to earn them their first division title since 2014. Whatever comes with it will come with it.
"When he's ripping off 80-yard touchdowns, we're gonna keep on winning games," Pittman said.
But if Taylor keeps this up, who knows what the discourse will look like come December. Whether it involves those three stories letters, though, we'll need to keep figuring out different ways to describe Taylor.
Even though whatever words we come up with won't feel like enough.
