According to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, while the Indianapolis Colts made an ‘aggressive move’ to re-sign Alec Pierce before Tuesday’s late afternoon league tag deadline, all signs were already pointing to the team’s lead wideout testing the free agent waters next mid-week—short of the Horseshoe applying the franchise tag (which the transition tag went to free agent quarterback and Pierce’s passing teammate Daniel Jones instead):
“There’s incentive for the Colts is to do a long-term deal with Daniel Jones, sooner rather than later,” said Rapoport. “Right up against it with the salary cap. They can restructure some guys. They can figure this out. But if they do a long-term deal with Daniel Jones, their cap situation gets a lot easier and that might be pretty important because as you mentioned, Alec Pierce is going to be a free agent.”
“I know the Colts made an aggressive move to try to sign him before the franchise tag deadline. That was never going to happen. Not going to sign, unless he knew for sure who his quarterback was going to be.”
“Now he knows it’s Daniel Jones, but timing is really not on the Colts side here.”
“Today’s Tuesday. Right? So in like five days, or four days, whatever the math may be, the tampering window begins. Players never get this close to free agency and at least don’t entertain offers. It’s hard to imagine he does any deal until at least the end of the week before he’s going to find out what’s out there.”
“Besides George Pickens, who is a franchise tag member of the Dallas Cowboys, this is one of the top free agents regardless of positions. Certainly the top wide receiver. He’s going to get a huge deal, and the Colts, are not [just] competing with themselves, but the entire rest of the NFL.”
Of course, this is shaping up to be what a lot of Colts fans ultimately feared.
Without a franchise tag applied to him, Pierce after a breakout 2026 campaign, in which he led the league in average yards per catch for a consecutive year, hitting the open market as an unrestricted free agent—and essentially free to sign anywhere without significant suitor compensation deterring other teams from offering or even providing the Colts the opportunity to match any offer sheet.
At 25-years-old and still improving as an overall route runner, Pierce caught 47 receptions for 1,003 total receiving yards and 6 touchdowns receptions during 14 starts, but it’s his unique skill-set of separating vertically downfield, high-pointing the football, maintaining body control, and making highly athletic/acrobatic catches through contact that make him one of the league’s truly elite deep threats.
The first waves of free agency can be a frenzy and very unpredictable.
Colts fans saw that firsthand last season when rotational defensive lineman Dayo Odeyingbo inked a 3-year, $48 million deal with the Chicago Bears (featuring $32M guaranteed during the first waves). Pierce is a better player than Odeyingbo was at that stage of their respective careers, and all it takes is one illogical team to make a shocking offer to potentially out-price the Colts from a salary cap standpoint.
As Rapoport notes, with Pickens a recipient of the franchise tag, Pierce now becomes the top free agent wideout.
He had already been speculated as an offseason target for nearly every team potentially in need of a wide receiver upgrade this early offseason, particularly those with bigger and stronger armed quarterbacks.
If push comes to shove, especially if the Colts can’t lock in Jones to a multi-year contract extension, can anyone reasonably blame Pierce, if the money is comparable, that he gets to catch passes from potentially a Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, etc. who are all better quarterbacks and bigger armed for downfield shots?
This is why a lot of Colts fans were clamoring for Pierce to receive the franchise tag, instead of Jones being the recipient of the transition tag. While Jones’ average annual value of his contract will assuredly be higher, Pierce projects to have a lot more interested suitors, as there’s more teams with wide receiver holes than those handful that are in need of a starting quarterback rehabbing from a late season torn Achilles that seem to fit with Jones.
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