Shortly after the NFL’s legal negotiating window for free agency opened, the Indianapolis Colts and wide receiver Alec Pierce agreed to a new contract.
Pierce and the Colts agreed to a four-year deal worth $114 million, including $84 million guaranteed.
“A long process and Ballard did a good job communicating to kind of just like, ‘hey trust me with me, stay with me,'” Pierce said recently on the Downs 2 Business podcast. “It didn’t really happen until like a couple weeks before the deadline, when we start throwing back offers and figuring that out.”
However, before a new deal was reached, the Colts took what may have been an unconventional path. Along with attempting to re-sign Pierce, the Colts were also working on a new deal for quarterback Daniel Jones.
Perhaps in a perfect world, before free agency began, the Colts would have agreed to a deal with Jones, and then franchise tagged Pierce, preventing him from hitting the open market.
But, as we know, that isn’t how things played out. Unable to reach an agreement with Jones right away, the Colts placed the transition tag on him, which then allowed Pierce to potentially test free agency.
Pierce wanted to remain in Indianapolis, but that was contingent on the quarterback situation being figured out first.
“I knew from the jump like it was the quarterback position. I had to treat them like they didn’t have a quarterback until they figured out the quarterback situation. So, like I think they understood that from my aspect and they were like, ‘Okay, we got to figure out the quarterback first’ because right now, without having Daniel signed, it’s a whole different team that I’m looking at in terms of just like because as a receiver, you need a quarterback.”
“So, my agents and they kind of understood that like, hey, we got to get Daniel stuff done first. And I feel like at first like they might have been thinking they they were going to get a deal done with Daniel and I think they were probably going to franchise tag me but just with the way that Daniel in their negotiations went I think they were so far off and they ended up having to use the tag because they knew they couldn’t lose him, so they used the tag on him.”
Pierce continued, “So then that allowed me to go to free agency, which then that was like where the biggest kind of unknown was for me and the only time I started thinking about other teams and stuff is because I didn’t know what the (transition) tag — I was just unsure,” Pierce added. “I thought another team might take Daniel then. And then I was kind of like worried like okay, if our quarterback’s gone like what is the direction? So there was probably a two to three-day period there where I was kind of considering, I was like, man, am I really gonna have to go somewhere else?”
Although Pierce faced some uncertainty, any reports that came out prior to free agency all suggested that both he and Jones would be back in Indianapolis. It just required some additional time beforehand to iron out the details.
Although known for his big play abilities, Pierce has developed into a well-rounded wideout, able to impact the game at each level of the field, while doing so in a variety of ways. Pierce is ready to step into that true WR1 role for Indianapolis this season.
This article originally appeared on Colts Wire: Alec Pierce reveals process behind free agency negotiations with Colts
