MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Jonathan Taylor snaked through a crease off the left side of the line and outraced the defense for a 38-yard touchdown to cap the opening drive for the Indianapolis Colts, giving them a lead they maintained until early in the fourth quarter on Sunday.
The Colts never got close to the end zone again in a 16-10 loss to the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday.
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Minnesota Vikings linebacker Dallas Turner (15) sacks Indianapolis Colts quarterback Daniel Jones during the first half of an NFL football game in Minneapolis, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Bruce Kluckhohn)
Indianapolis Colts quarterback Daniel Jones (17) talks with head coach Shane Steichen during the first half of an NFL football game against the Minnesota Vikings in Minneapolis, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Indianapolis Colts running back Jonathan Taylor (28) runs toward the end zone to score against the Minnesota Vikings during the first half of an NFL football game in Minneapolis, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Bruce Kluckhohn)
Indianapolis Colts running back Jonathan Taylor (28) greets Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson after an NFL football game in Minneapolis, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Indianapolis Colts running back Jonathan Taylor (28) and wide receiver Laquon Treadwell (13) react as they walk off the field after an NFL football game against the Minnesota Vikings in Minneapolis, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
How many more times can the Colts turn to their three-time Pro Bowl tailback for a momentum-seizing touchdown? With the season skidding away and the Nov. 10 trade deadline approaching, there's no certainty Taylor will be around after it passes.
Three-time All-Pro left guard Quenton Nelson also will figure prominently on lists of trade candidates. After general manager Chris Ballard was fired before the trip to Minnesota, the heat on coach Shane Steichen has turned up as well.
“I just feel like everyone came to work and are doing their best," Nelson said. “I don’t know what else to say.”
The visiting locker room at U.S. Bank Stadium was particularly sullen. Defensive tackle DeForest Buckner was a bit testy when asked by a reporter about his level of frustration.
“How about you guess?” Buckner said. “Yeah, I'm frustrated. Same thing: We lost.”
There's no running from the situation for the Colts. Even Taylor's wife posted on social media this week about the possibility of moving on from the team that drafted him in the second round in 2020.
“You know everybody's on TikTok these days,” Taylor said, downplaying the potential for any distraction. “Just got to stay focused.”
Despite his season-best average of 5.3 yards per rush and a solid performance by the defense, the Colts (2-5) dropped their third straight game as Daniel Jones — like so many other quarterbacks this year — was overwhelmed by Minnesota's relentless pass rush.
“You come out, you play hard, you fight, and it always comes down to a couple plays,” Taylor said. “It’s a very good team over there, but at the end of the day, I know we have the guys. We knew it was going to be a challenge, but you’ve got to think about how to find ways to just make one more play than your opponent.”
Taylor, who rushed for 1,585 yards and an NFL-leading 18 touchdowns last season, has not reached the 100-yard mark in 15 games since his 244-yard romp over Atlanta in Week 10 last year.
Against a Minnesota defense that leads the league in several statistical categories and has allowed just 74 points in six games, Taylor had 18 carries for 95 yards and two catches for 15 yards.
With some timely boosts from rookie Seth McGowan, who rushed 11 times for 46 yards, the Colts largely met their goal of moving the ball on the ground to try to counteract the constant blitzing dialed up by Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores.
Jones still took four sacks for 44 yards, and on the second play of the last-chance drive, his pass under pressure was intercepted by Harrison Smith near midfield to clinch the Colts' 12th loss in 14 games since starting 8-2 last season.
Jones will remain the starter, Steichen said, despite only four touchdown passes and seven interceptions in seven games.
The Colts need a spark from more than just the quarterback.
“Staying down and wallowing and feeling sorry yourself is never going to get you anywhere,” McGowan said. “You can either have faith or you can doubt your situation. You can’t do both. We’re going to choose faith. We’re going to choose to believe in the guys in this room, and we’re going to choose to work. That’s all we can do. I feel good about everybody in here, and I feel good about our future.”
See AP’s full NFL coverage here
Minnesota Vikings linebacker Dallas Turner (15) sacks Indianapolis Colts quarterback Daniel Jones during the first half of an NFL football game in Minneapolis, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Bruce Kluckhohn)
Indianapolis Colts quarterback Daniel Jones (17) talks with head coach Shane Steichen during the first half of an NFL football game against the Minnesota Vikings in Minneapolis, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Indianapolis Colts running back Jonathan Taylor (28) runs toward the end zone to score against the Minnesota Vikings during the first half of an NFL football game in Minneapolis, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Bruce Kluckhohn)
Indianapolis Colts running back Jonathan Taylor (28) greets Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson after an NFL football game in Minneapolis, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Indianapolis Colts running back Jonathan Taylor (28) and wide receiver Laquon Treadwell (13) react as they walk off the field after an NFL football game against the Minnesota Vikings in Minneapolis, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
JALUD, West Bank (AP) — Israel's elections Tuesday could mark the end of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decades-long political career.
But his legacy in the Israeli-occupied West Bank — of massive settlement expansion, the displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the empowerment of armed settler extremists — will likely endure, even if his opponents seek to rein it in.
Israelis are deeply divided over Netanyahu's leadership and moral character, but they largely support settlement expansion and are opposed to a Palestinian state. So while Netanyahu's opponents have vowed to crack down on settler violence and remove the most contentious outposts, they are mostly against a two-state solution, seen internationally as the only realistic way to resolve the conflict.
“There shouldn’t be any illusions,” said Mairav Zonszein, senior Israel analyst at the International Crisis Group.
“At best, (a new government) would be able to slow down the extremely crazy acceleration that we’ve seen in the last four years of every aspect of Israel’s aggression in the occupied territories and inside Israel itself.”
One legacy of Netanyahu’s nearly unbroken 17-year rule — the longest of any Israeli leader — is that large groups of armed settlers now routinely defy the Israeli military as they rampage through Palestinian communities, drive people from their homes and seize ever larger swaths of their land.
Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack out of Gaza turbocharged the process. Netanyahu's opponents could bring in more troops and authorize stricter measures, but the genie may already be out of the bottle.
Netanyahu's government has distributed thousands of firearms to the settlers, who have allies in the military and security forces. Some extremist settlers have become like sheriffs — making arrests, killing Palestinians they say posed a threat, summoning security forces and driving Palestinian families from their homes.
The Palestinian Tubasi family was forced out in July after settlers besieged their hilltop home in the West Bank village of Jalud for 19 days. The settlers cut off their water access and their electricity, and threatened to “barbecue” them if they didn’t leave, said Mahmoud Tubasi, 60, the patriarch.
An Israeli court ordered the military to bring the family back, but that hasn't happened. Troops aborted their latest mission soon after it began, when a mob of over 150 armed settlers quickly assembled, scaled the walls of the home and set a car on fire.
Troops threw Tubasi and his family into an armored jeep and drove them away as settlers torched the place. They now live in relatives' houses in the valley below their gutted and blackened home, around which settlers still roam.
Israel’s military did not respond to a request for comment.
“If they wanted to evacuate them, of course, 100%, they can do that,” Tubasi said. “This is an army that fights in Lebanon, Gaza and in Iran — they can’t control 150 or 200 settlers?”
Under Netanyahu, settlers have established over 250 rustic camps across the territory, focusing particularly on areas where Palestinian herding communities have dwelled for decades.
The outposts allow the settlers to effectively run Palestinians off vast rural areas by attacking shepherds, taking over water resources and grazing their own herds, all under the eye of Israeli troops.
Dror Etkes, a researcher with an Israeli anti-settlement group, says the outposts have allowed the settlers to seize effective control of around a fifth of the West Bank. Israel captured the territory, along with Gaza and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories for their future state.
Since 2023, the strategy has forced at least 127 Palestinian herding communities off their land, according to data gathered by Etkes' organization, known as Kerem Navot, and B'Tselem, another Israeli anti-settlement group.
The departures have cleared nearly the entire eastern flank of the West Bank, along the border with Jordan, of Palestinians. The settlers' explicit goal is to prevent the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.
Netanyahu’s opponents say they will go after the most violent settlers and dismantle outposts — which are illegal under Israeli law. But they will not evacuate the over 100 new settlements Netanyahu's government legalized, including 44 that were formerly outposts. Nor will they remove settlements dating back decades, many of which now resemble fully developed suburbs.
Most of the international community views all Israeli settlements as illegal and an obstacle to a two-state solution. Israel views the West Bank as the biblical and historical heartland of the Jewish people and says its future status should be decided by negotiations — which have not been held in over a decade.
Even if some outposts are removed, many Palestinians seeking to return would find their homes burned and looted, and would continue to face threats from nearby settlers.
“The story is over. There will be no massive dismantlement of settlement,” said Etkes. “It’s now a full and prouder-than-ever apartheid regime.”
Amnesty International and other major rights groups accused Israel of the international crime of apartheid even before the Oct. 7 attack and its aftermath. Israel denies the allegation.
The politician most likely to replace Netanyahu as prime minister is retired general Gadi Eisenkot, a political centrist. He hopes to form a majority coalition with three other parties spanning Israel's political spectrum and without Arab-led parties advocating a two-state solution.
Beth Oppenheim, an Israel analyst for the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the opposition has “struggled to formulate a convincing alternative" to the right's new security strategy of “aggressively pre-empting threats, maintaining complete freedom of operation and imposing buffer zones.”
Palestinian attacks, like a shooting on Friday that killed two Israeli soldiers, and efforts on the right to cast the Israeli left as enemy sympathizers, have taken their toll. “The net effect is that talk of ‘peace’ and compromise has become politically toxic,” Oppenheim said.
Eisenkot does not support a Palestinian state but is open to limited self-rule in the 40% of the West Bank currently administered by the Palestinian Authority under agreements reached in the 1990s. He would allow settlement growth in the other 60% of the territory, which is under direct Israeli military rule.
He has also vowed to empower Israeli troops and paramilitary Border Police to crack down on settler violence.
Eisenkot “is interested in lowering the friction in the West Bank and interested in definitely lowering the sanctions and the intention for sanctions by European countries,” Zonszein said. “He’ll do kind of the minimum necessary to get the maximum effect.”
Eisenkot's prospective allies include left-wing politicians who oppose settlements and have favored a two-state solution, but they have agreed to set those positions aside to form a coalition to oust Netanyahu.
Israeli leaders have long balanced their ambitions in the occupied territories with demands from Washington aimed at resolving the conflict. But they are unlikely to face any significant pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, who endorsed Netanyahu and has long backed his policies.
Krauss reported from Ottawa, Ontario.
FILE - An Israeli settler overlooks members of Israeli forces blocking a road preventing Palestinians from reaching groves to harvest olives in the West Bank town of Turmus Ayya, Oct. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa, File)
FILE - A burnt car is seen in front of one of the two Palestinian houses belonging to the Tubasi family, which were burned in the West Bank village of Jalud, Sept. 29, 2026, following an overnight attack by Israeli settlers. (AP Photo/Leo Correa, File)
FILE - Israeli settlers are seen at one of the Palestinian houses belonging to the Tubasi family after they took it over in the West Bank village of Jalud, Aug. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa, File)
Mahmoud Tubasi, left, and his son Wael, over look their family's houses, which were burned by Israeli settlers in the West Bank village of Jalud, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Mahmoud Tubasi stands on a rooftop near his two family's houses, which were burned by Israeli settlers in the West Bank village of Jalud, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
