Alec Pierce Is More Than a Deep Threat, But Still Hard to Trust in Fantasy Football

Alec Pierce finally became more than just a cardio king in 2025. After years of living almost entirely on boundary snaps and low-percentage deep shots, the former second-round pick expanded his route tree, won more often over the middle of the field, and turned in the best fantasy season of his career. With Michael Pittman gone and the Colts investing in Pierce long-term, there is a clear case for another step forward. The problem is that his role still carries plenty of volatility, and the combination of Daniel Jones’ health, Pierce’s ankle recovery, Josh Downs, and Tyler Warren keeps this from being a clean WR2 breakout bet.

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Alec Pierce’s Career

Say what you want about Alec Pierce’s career progression, one thing’s certain: the man has some great cardio. Though he’s received a measly 0.158 targets per route run over four seasons, he just keeps flying down the field, finishing each of the last three seasons in the top six in average depth of target, including leading all wide receivers in 2024 (22.2) and 2025 (19.4).

Coming out of the University of Cincinnati, this was exactly the type of player evaluators had pegged him as: a big-bodied, straight-line threat who would have some immediate issues breaking off his routes and/or gaining substantial yards after the catch. His rookie year was promising from a production standpoint (41-593-2), but there was no more locked-in, boundary-only wide receiver in the NFL: out of 103 qualifying receivers, Pierce’s 6.8% slot rate was 103rd.

While his alignment would tilt to being slightly more slot-oriented over the next two seasons, his pure reliance on the deep ball would not change. In 2023, 30.2% of his targets and 52.6% of his 79.4 half-PPR points came on balls 20+ yards downfield, while in 2024, those numbers jumped to 45.5% and 52.9%, respectively. If we were ever going to take him seriously as a fantasy asset, he was going to have to prove that he could win more often in the intermediate areas of the field and create something after the catch.

*Out of roughly 75 WRs, depending on the year.

Spoiler alert: he did.

With the help of a more focused intermediate game, Pierce set new career-highs in yards after the catch and first downs per route run, both of which hint at the fact that he wasn’t operating only as a go-ball maven. Via Matt Harmon’s Reception Perception profile on Pierce,

“...his biggest area of development was a massive increase in usage and success rate on dig routes. Pierce ran a dig on 24.1% of his charted routes, and his 82% success rate is excellent. Being able to run past corners on go routes is great, and Pierce does it quite often. Yet, when we’re hunting for big plays in today’s split-safety world, you also need to be able to create explosives working over the middle of the field.”

The fantasy numbers back up Harmon’s assessment, too; Pierce caught ten passes on digs for 24.3 half-PPR points, far more than the last two seasons combined (16.4). He also bettered his previous two-year production on out routes, going from six catches and 75 yards across 2023-2024 to seven catches and 94 yards in 2025. That may not sound like much, but it matters for a receiver who had previously lived almost entirely on boundary/deep-ball usage. These are obviously not massive numbers in a vacuum, but these little pockets of extra production are what helped promote Pierce from a fantasy afterthought to a player that we wanted on our squads.

The same can clearly be said about the Indianapolis Colts organization, which not only allowed Michael Pittman to walk in free agency but also signed the former UC Bearcat to a four-year, $116M deal.

The Colts’ Offense in 2026

Who knows? On to the next section…

Ok, but really, how do we piece this together? The entire Indianapolis coaching staff is back, but they’re likely in much hotter water than if we were to have checked in around roughly Week 8 of the 2025 season. The downfall of the team and offense reached desperation levels when they coaxed Philip Rivers out of retirement, and their hopes for a bounce-back from the second-half of last season all rest on the health of Daniel Jones’ Achilles.

Apparently, that seems to be a foregone conclusion, which is promising. Reports say that Jones was already throwing back in April, working in individual periods in May, and participating in seven-on-seven drills near the end of OTAs.

Hopefully that means there’s nothing to worry about regarding his Week 1 availability, but there are still some question marks here. Over his final four non-Achilles starts, Jones posted a -1.4% completion rate over expected (27th/38 qualifiers), four interceptions, and seven fumbles, in a month in which he looked as if he may have reverted to a below-league-average quarterback. Luckily, the team is bringing back the Shane Steichen/Jim Bob Cooter pairing that squeezed those early-season high-end games out of Jones in the first place, and still finished top-10 in passing yardage, points per drive, and touchdowns per drive despite that late-season quarterback rotation with Rivers and Riley Leonard.

If we take an optimistic lens on Jones’ recovery and health, we’re going to need to do the same thing with Pierce if we’re looking for continued growth from the de facto WR1. In some rather surprising early-March news, it was announced that the wide receiver had a “clean-up” procedure on an ankle that was bothering him to a growing degree throughout last season. He would end up missing both OTAs and minicamp, while he’s expected back “at some point” in training camp.

It’s one more variable that makes this seemingly obvious trajectory a little more difficult to parse.

Projecting the Colts’ Pass-Catchers in Fantasy

Assuming that Jones returns to first-half 2025 form, and the Colts are once again a top-10 offense, there’s still no guarantee that Pierce will break that 20% target share barrier and be a week-in, week-out fantasy contributor. We have the target hole due to Pittman’s departure, and we’ve seen an expansion of Pierce’s once-limited route tree, but he’s still going to be quite dependent on those volatile deep balls.

And though Pierce has improved outside of pure go routes, there’s an argument to be made that Josh Downs is still better in basically every other facet. That’s something that Stephen Hoopes illustrated very well in his write-up on Downs, with the conclusion that if he were to get some more outside usage, there’s a very good chance he out-paces his teammate because, well, he runs good routes and gets open. Pretty easy to follow that logic.

The rest of the wide receiver room beyond, potentially, Ashlin Dulin, is pretty barren, but they both still have to deal with Tyler Warren, who figures to get a ton of those “at the line of scrimmage” looks (i.e., screens, leaks, chips, and check & release), while his 22.2% first-read rate (second on the team, sixth among the tight end position) could continue to grow as a sophomore.

We got more “easy” looks for Alec Pierce in 2025, and though that’s a reason to be bullish on him, there are still better options on the team for those easy-button looks, which still makes him a shaky consistency bet. Particularly if he’s not fully cleared by Week 1. I haven’t been aggressively targeting either Pierce or Downs, but with Downs coming at a three-round discount, the two look closer to the WR3/4 fringe than clear weekly WR2 bets.

Bottom Line

• Alec Pierce’s 2025 breakout was not just a deep-ball heater. He expanded his route tree, made real gains in the intermediate areas of the field, and gave the Colts enough confidence to let Michael Pittman leave while signing Pierce to a long-term deal.
• The opportunity is there, but the weekly profile is still fragile. Pierce remains tied to a recovering Daniel Jones, is working back from his own ankle cleanup, and has to compete with Josh Downs and Tyler Warren for the easier, more consistent targets in the offense.
• According to 4for4’s Multi-Site ADP, Pierce is coming off boards as the WR36 in the middle of the eighth round, in a bucket of receivers like Jordyn Tyson, Parker Washington, and DK Metcalf. The spike weeks will be there if the Colts offense rebounds, which obviously makes sense for best ball leagues, but unless his intermediate usage keeps growing and the target share climbs a ton, he remains a volatile fantasy option who will be much harder to trust in typical redraft than his 2025 finish suggests.