Ballard's quotes and my takes: How the Colts want to keep Taylor, but on their terms and their terms only

The Colts are playing this correctly (mostly). They're playing the long game, and they're putting Taylor in a very dark corner.

A lot of general managers would have come out Wednesday, the day after the Colts failed to make a deal involving Jonathan Taylor, made a brief, empty statement about the ugly JT situation and then said, “I’m not answering any questions about the running back. But I’ll take questions about the roster.”

Not Chris Ballard.

It’s one of the reasons he’s given more grace than he probably deserves from the local media. He knows how the game is played. So instead of trying to control the narrative, he talked, and talked, and talked some more about the failed effort to move Taylor, who is staging a very public hold-in.

Toward that end, I thought it would be a good idea to share his quotes (in italics) from Wednesday’s presser and then offer my take regarding each utterance. To wit:

All right, so now let’s address the elephant, Jonathan (Taylor). I want to talk, and I want y’all to hear it because I know you’re going to have questions. Just so y’all know and I want everybody to know, Jonathan is a well-respected and really good human being and a damn good football player. I think we all know this. Things like this happen. I tell every rookie that comes in here, ‘There’s going to be a point when we disagree, and it’s usually about money and it’s going to be hard. And just know that doesn’t change my care level for you.’ I care deeply for Jonathan Taylor. I have great respect for Jonathan Taylor. Our relationship I would tell you is – look, even when it gets hard, I won’t quit on the relationship. I won’t do it. I think too much of the young man. I think too much of what he’s given our organization and how hard he’s played for us.

What sucks – I mean, the situation sucks. I’m not going to sit here and give you some rosy picture like everything is OK. No, it sucks. It sucks for the Colts, it sucks for Jonathan Taylor and it sucks for our fans. It does. It’s where we’re at and we’ve got to work through it, and we’re going to do everything we can to work through it. Relationships are repairable. They’re repairable. Guys get emotional and take a stance. You’ve got to be able to work through those. Have you ever in your life had a good friend, spouse or family member that you’ve had a disagreement with and then you draw a line in the sand and say, ‘This person is out of my life.’? Well no, I mean, how do you do that? No, you work through it and hopefully you come out the other side better because of it. We’ve got work to do, we do. We’ve got work to do on the relationship and we’ve got work to do to find a solution to the problem, which is what we’re going to do.

My take: