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# Jonathan Taylor Ran for 190 Yards on Baltimore and Kansas City. The Colts Lost Both.
- URL: https://www.statsdigest.com/jonathan-taylor-run-game-vs-ravens-chiefs-2026-week-2/
- Published: 2026-09-25T13:51:43.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-25T13:51:42.000Z
- Description: Taylor's two-game rate tops every full season of his career, against two top-12 run defenses. Indy lost both.
- Author: Bill Seifert
- Tags: Jonathan Taylor, Colts, EPA, run defense, Ravens, Chiefs

Two games is nothing. Two games against these two run defenses is something.

> **The topline:** Through Indianapolis's first two 2026 games, Jonathan Taylor has 43 carries for 190 yards and 4 rushing touchdowns at **+0.140 EPA/rush** — a rate better than any full season of his six-year career. The opponents were Baltimore and Kansas City, two of the sturdier run defenses of the last three years. Indianapolis lost both games anyway.

That 4.42 YPC line looks pedestrian on the box score and, in context, isn't. Baltimore's defense allowed −0.052 EPA/rush in 2025 (9th in the league), −0.114 in 2024 (2nd), and −0.077 in 2023 (11th). Kansas City has lived in a similar band: −0.043 in 2025 (12th), −0.032 in 2024 (14th), and −0.003 in 2023 (25th, a middling year sandwiched between two much stingier ones). This is not a "the Colts figured it out" piece — Indianapolis lost both games. It's a piece about the one thing they did do, twice, against defenses that generally don't let it happen.

## Table of Contents

1. What Taylor actually did, game by game
2. Why Baltimore and Kansas City are the right test
3. Team-level context: this wasn't just a Taylor outlier
4. What it does and doesn't mean at 43 carries

## What Taylor actually did, game by game

Against Baltimore in Week 1: **19 carries, 98 yards, 2 TDs, 5.16 YPC, +0.116 EPA/rush.** Against Kansas City in Week 2: **24 carries, 92 yards, 2 TDs, 3.83 YPC, +0.159 EPA/rush.** Combined: 43 carries, 190 yards, 4 touchdowns, +0.140 EPA/rush.

For context on Taylor's own baseline: his EPA/rush by season has run +0.044 (2020), +0.104 (2021), −0.149 (2022), −0.060 (2023), −0.075 (2024) and +0.058 (2025). His +0.140 through two games in 2026 is above every one of those season marks, including his best full season (2021). It is also, obviously, a two-game number, and small-sample rate stats bounce.

His prior meetings with these two defenses were more typical of what they do to backs. Taylor against Kansas City in 2025: 16 carries, 58 yards, 0 TDs, −0.230 EPA/rush. Against Kansas City in 2022: 21 carries, 71 yards, 0 TDs, −0.363\. Against Baltimore in 2021: 15 carries, 53 yards, 1 TD, +0.003\. The 2026 games broke a pattern that had held for him personally, not just for the league generally.

## Why Baltimore and Kansas City are the right test

Both defenses have been consistent run-stoppers for multiple years, not a single fluky season. Baltimore's rush-defense EPA/play by season: −0.061 (2022), −0.077 (2023, 11th), −0.114 (2024, 2nd), −0.052 (2025, 9th). Kansas City's: +0.007 (2022), −0.003 (2023, 25th), −0.032 (2024, 14th), −0.043 (2025, 12th) — directionally getting better, not worse, over the past two seasons.

And they mostly kept doing it elsewhere in 2026: Kansas City held Denver to 14 carries for 62 yards (−0.103 EPA/rush) in Week 1, and Baltimore held New Orleans to 27 carries for 68 yards (−0.051 EPA/rush) in Week 2\. In each defense's other 2026 game this season, the opposing run game was smothered. Indianapolis's wasn't.

So the story isn't "the Ravens and Chiefs can't stop the run this year." Both defenses have, in the same two-week window, done exactly what their track record says they should do — just not against Taylor.

## Team-level context: this wasn't just a Taylor outlier

It's worth checking whether this was purely a Taylor number or whether Indianapolis's whole rushing attack ran hot in both games. It's the latter. As a team, Indianapolis posted +0.122 EPA/rush against Baltimore's defense in Week 1 (20 carries) and +0.120 EPA/rush against Kansas City's defense in Week 2 (32 carries) — both comfortably above what those defenses had allowed on average across 2025 (−0.052 and −0.043, respectively). Taylor's individual per-game marks (+0.116 vs. Baltimore, +0.159 vs. Kansas City) track closely with those team-wide numbers, which is a useful sanity check: this isn't one huge individual run skewing a small sample, it's a game-long pattern in both matchups.

## What it does and doesn't mean at 43 carries

Forty-three carries is not a season — it's barely a game and a half of an NFL workload for a lead back. A +0.140 EPA/rush rate off that sample is not proof that Taylor has settled into being the league's most efficient runner; two-game numbers for any player move around a lot, and his own career high across a full season is +0.104 (2021). I'd expect his 2026 number to migrate back toward something closer to his 2021 or 2025 range as the sample fills in — that's an expectation, not a projection anyone should bank on.

What is worth noting is the *opponent quality on the two games we do have*. If Taylor had done this against a bottom-third run defense, it would be a footnote. Instead, both Baltimore and Kansas City did to another 2026 opponent almost exactly what their multi-year track record predicts — and did the opposite to Indianapolis. The Colts lost both games regardless; whatever went right for Taylor did not fix whatever went wrong everywhere else. But the specific thing he did in these two specific games — against two defenses that have made life hard on backs for three straight years — is worth watching for, not dismissing as noise. Whether it repeats against a defense that isn't grading out well against the run is the next real test, and two games can't answer it.