Colts G.M. Chris Ballard wants volunteers. Colts owner Jim Irsay doesn’t mind taking hostages.
In response to running back Jonathan Taylor’s request for a trade, Irsay has made the team’s position clear. There will be no trade.
“We’re not trading Jonathan . . . end of discussion,” Irsay texted Albert Breer of SI.com. “Not now and not in October!”
Irsay also offered a more philosophical comment, via James Boyd of TheAthletic.com.
“If I die tonight and Jonathan Taylor is out of the league, no one’s gonna miss us,” Irsay said. “The league goes on. We know that. The National Football [League] rolls on. It doesn’t matter who comes and who goes, and it’s a privilege to be a part of it.”
He’s partially right. It’s a privilege for Irsay and the Colts to have had the ability to compel Taylor to play for the Colts or no one, if he wanted to play in the NFL at all. It’s a privilege for Irsay and the Colts to have had the ability to secure the contractual rights to Taylor for four years, and to keep him around via the franchise tag for two more years after that, before doing it all over again with some other player.
And the whole thing is definitely a privilege for Irsay, whose privileged life has put him in the position he now has. He has built nothing. He has taken no financial risks, ever. He was simply in the right place at the right time with the right DNA.
Irsay hasn’t worked for a single thing he has. Taylor has worked for all of it. And now Irsay will both refuse to give Taylor a fair (or any) long-term contract, or to trade him to a team that will.
That said, there’s potentially a method to Irsay’s apparent madness. Perhaps he’s saying the Colts won’t trade Taylor in order to drive up the value they’ll receive in return for him.
Regardless, Irsay’s position is creating a mess. And Ballard, who has made it clear he he only wants players who want to be there, will now have to clean it all up. While hoping Irsay doesn’t make it worse before Ballard can find a way to make it better.
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