By Adam
Alec Pierce caught 47 passes last season for 1,003 yards. Not 100 catches. Forty-seven. That works out to 21.3 yards every time he touched the ball, which led the NFL, and it was the second year running he led the NFL, after 22.3 in 2024. The last player to average 20-plus on 35 or more catches in back-to-back seasons was Flipper Anderson, in 1989 and 1990.
I bring that up first because it is the entire reason this piece exists. Pierce had offseason ankle surgery, opened training camp on the active/PUP list, and has not practiced. Indianapolis is activating him off PUP this week. Everything else below is an argument about why that transaction matters more than a 47-catch receiver's usually would.
What the ankle situation actually is
Here is what is known, and I am going to be careful to keep it to that.
Pierce had surgery on his ankle in the offseason and started camp on active/PUP, which is the list you use for a player you expect back rather than one you are hiding. On 25 August, Shane Steichen said Pierce might return to practice later that week and, more tellingly, that the team had not had conversations about keeping him on PUP into the regular season. That second part is the useful sentence. Season-opening PUP costs a player the first four games. A coach who has not discussed it in late August is a coach who expects his receiver in Week 1.
Then this week, Adam Schefter reported the Colts are activating Pierce off the list.
What that is not: a report that he is running full speed, or that he will play in the preseason finale, or that the ankle is behind him. Coming off PUP means he is allowed to practice. It does not tell you what he looks like when he does. Anyone claiming to know more than that in August is guessing, and I would rather say so than dress a transaction up as a diagnosis.
Why a 47-catch receiver is the swing factor
The honest objection to this whole article is that 47 catches is not very many, and receivers with 47 catches are usually replaceable. So let me make the case properly.
Pierce's average depth of target last season was 20 yards. That is not a stylistic footnote, it is a job description. He is the reason a safety has to stay home. Every underneath route the Colts run, every play-action keeper, every carry that hits a lighter box, is priced against the possibility that the man split wide runs past everybody. You do not need him to catch eight balls a game for that to work. You need him on the field, and you need defensive coordinators to believe the ankle is fine.
Take him away and the geometry changes for everyone else. Safeties creep down. Throwing windows underneath get smaller, not bigger. The run game meets an extra body. That cost never appears in Pierce's own stat line, which is exactly why his stat line understates him.
The 2025 tape also complicated the lazy version of this take. He was not only a track athlete running go routes. He turned into a receiver who won contested balls in real moments, and PFF graded him 79.3 overall and 81.0 as a receiver, 16th of 81 qualifying wideouts. That is a starter, not a specialist.
The part that actually worries me
An ankle is the wrong injury for this particular player.
Pierce's value is built on two physical things: eating ground vertically, and going up over a defender at the catch point. Both of those route back through an ankle. A running back can lose a step and survive on vision. A possession receiver can lose a step and survive on route craft. A receiver whose whole case is 21.3 yards a catch does not have that fallback, because the thing that makes him valuable is the thing the surgery touched.
I am not predicting he is diminished. I have no information that says he is, and the reporting all points the other way. I am saying the honest read is that "available" and "the same" are two different questions, and coming off PUP only answers the first one. We will not learn the second until he plays real snaps against someone allowed to hit him.
What I would do about it in a draft
If you are drafting this weekend, the market is doing what the market does with a player who missed camp: discounting him for the uncertainty, not for the ability. That is usually where the value is, and I would rather have the receiver who led the league in yards per catch two years running at a camp-absence price than pay up for the safer profile going a round earlier.
But size it honestly. He is a boom-week player even at full health, because a 47-catch season is a lumpy one; the weeks he wins you are enormous and the weeks he disappears are real. Add an ankle that has not been tested and you have a player worth taking, not a player worth reaching for.
The Colts' ceiling this season needs the version of Pierce who scares safeties. The reporting says he is on his way back. The ankle gets a vote too, and it has not cast it yet.