{"id":737081,"date":"2026-02-08T02:43:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T02:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/737081\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T02:43:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T02:43:14","slug":"indianapolis-colts-free-agent-potential-franchise-tag-candidate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/737081\/","title":{"rendered":"Indianapolis Colts free agent potential franchise tag candidate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Free agent wide receiver Alec Pierce is a candidate to be franchise tagged this offseason by the <a href=\"https:\/\/coltswire.usatoday.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Indianapolis Colts;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Indianapolis Colts<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Teams can use the franchise tag once per offseason on a pending free agent to prevent them from hitting the open market.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>If applied, a franchise tag is essentially a one-year deal. The contract amount is predetermined and takes into account which position the tagged player plays.<\/p>\n<p>According to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/overthecap.com\/franchise-transition-and-rfa-tenders\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Over the Cap;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Over the Cap<\/a>, &#8220;franchise tag figures are based upon the top five salaries at each respective position.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Why would the <a href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/football\/nfl\/teams\/indianapolis-colts\/338\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Colts;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Colts<\/a> franchise tag Alec Pierce?<\/p>\n<p>The likely goal behind using the franchise tag on Pierce isn&#8217;t to have him play out the 2026 season on that contract.<\/p>\n<p>For one, from the sounds of it, GM Chris Ballard <a href=\"https:\/\/sports.yahoo.com\/articles\/colts-chris-ballard-weighs-alec-121904467.html\" data-ylk=\"slk:would like Pierce around;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;outcm:mb_qualified_link;_E:mb_qualified_link;ct:story;\" class=\"link  yahoo-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">would like Pierce around<\/a> beyond just one more season.<\/p>\n<p>But in addition to that, using the franchise tag isn&#8217;t very salary cap-friendly. Per OTC, the franchise tag for a wide receiver in 2026 is projected to be<a href=\"https:\/\/overthecap.com\/franchise-transition-and-rfa-tenders#google_vignette\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:$28.82 million;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \"> $28.82 million<\/a>, and since this is a one-year deal, that figure is what Pierce&#8217;s cap hit would be for this season as well.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>So the reason that the Colts would tag Pierce would likely be similar to why they tagged Michael Pittman during the 2024 offseason.<\/p>\n<p>Doing so would prevent Pierce from becoming a free agent and then buy him and the team more time to work out a long-term deal &#8212; which is how things played out with Pittman. An extension would then lower Pierce&#8217;s 2026 cap hit quite a bit versus playing out this season on the franchise tag.<\/p>\n<p>The<a href=\"https:\/\/operations.nfl.com\/gameday\/nfl-schedule\/2026-important-nfl-dates\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:deadline;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \"> deadline<\/a> for teams to use the franchise tag is 4:00 PM ET on March 3rd.<\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on Colts Wire: <a href=\"https:\/\/coltswire.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/nfl\/colts\/2026\/02\/07\/indianapolis-colts-free-agent-alec-pierce-franchise-tag-candidate\/88571811007\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Why Colts could use franchise tag on free agent Alec Pierce;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Why Colts could use franchise tag on free agent Alec Pierce<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Free agent wide receiver Alec Pierce is a candidate to be franchise tagged this offseason by the Indianapolis&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":737082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2059],"tags":[4994,5422,2005,7,32472,2004,392,2381,4983,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-737081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-indianapolis-colts","8":"tag-alec-pierce","9":"tag-chris-ballard","10":"tag-colts","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-franchise-tag","13":"tag-indianapolis","14":"tag-indianapolis-colts","15":"tag-indianapoliscolts","16":"tag-michael-pittman","17":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116032714116701102","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}