Jonathan Taylor sets Colts franchise record with five touchdowns vs. Bills

Colts running back Jonathan Taylor set a franchise record with five touchdowns against the Bills’ NFL-best defense.

The Buffalo Bills came into Sunday’s game against the Colts with the NFL’s best defense by DVOA — first in the league against the pass, and third against the run. The Bills were also second in the NFL in FO’s Adjusted Line Yards metric, which means that their run defense really hadn’t been a problem all year.

Which makes what Colts running back Jonathan Taylor has done against them all the more impressive. With his one-yard touchdown run at the end of the third quarter, Taylor crossed the end zone line for the fifth time in the game, setting a Colts franchise record with five touchdowns. Joseph Addai, Eric Dickerson, and Lenny Moore had scored four touchdowns in a game as Colts (Moore did it three different times), but nobody had ever done what Taylor did against the Bills.

The record for touchdowns in a single game is six, held at a tie by four different players — Ernie Nevers, Dub Jones, Gale Sayers, and Alvin Kamara.

Taylor also had rushing touchdowns of two, three, and 10 yards, and a 23-yard touchdown pass from Carson Wentz.

Not only did Taylor set a franchise record for a franchise that has been around since 1953 (as the Baltimore Colts until 1984), he also became the first back in the 2021 season to eclipse the 1,000-yard mark, and he became the first back since LaDainian Tomlinson in 2006 to put up eight consecutive games with at least 100 scrimmage yards and a rushing touchdown in a season. Tomlinson won the MVP award in 2006, and the way things are going this year, with no NFL team able to establish clear dominance, perhaps Taylor could wrest that award away as well.