One can easily argue that Indianapolis Colts general manager Chris Ballard didn't do quite enough to improve his team in what could be his final year in Indy. He did re-sign quarterback Daniel Jones and wide receiver Alec Pierce, but ESPN's Seth Walder wasn't a big fan of the process by which it was done.
While working through bringing both back, the team chose to place the transition tag on Jones, meaning the team could not tag Pierce. Walder believes the opposite should have happened. If it had, the ESPN reporter believes, the team wouldn't have had to overpay to have Pierce return.
This is misleading, though. The truth is that Indianapolis overpaid for both players, and placing the transition or franchise tags on one or the other likely wouldn't have changed that. Ballard had boxed himself into a corner, and not having either Jones or Pierce return would have been a travesty.
ESPN has wrong reasons for an otherwise valid Indianapolis Colts grade
The better move of the two, if a move needed to be made at all, was placing the tag on the quarterback, as Jones plays the most important position in football. Risking that he would leave while the team was assured to keep a receiver who had yet to have even 50 catches in a season would have been silly.
While Walder's overall point clearly has validity that the team gave too much money to Pierce ($116 million over four years, and $60 million guaranteed in the first two years of the deal), the team also did to Jones (as much as $88 million over two seasons, which was more on average than the transition tag).
Moreover, what isn't clear is whether the team was ultimately bidding against itself or other teams for the services of either player. The going rate for wide receivers keeps going up, and Pierce would certainly have had his suitors because he is so explosive. An average of nearly $30 million a season is a lot for most human beings, of course, but not for NFL receivers.
Teams tend to pay for what they hope will be future production, and Pierce is still only 26 years old and has led the league in yards per catch in each of the past two seasons. While he hasn't yet had 50 catches in a single season, he is capable of doing so, obviously.
And while he did have ankle surgery in the offseason, that likely wouldn't have lowered his asking price from any team. The surgery was correcting an issue, not trying to fix an injury that forced Alec Pierce to miss games.
As for Daniel Jones, he got paid because he is a quarterback, and overpaid position in the NFL. He has to earn his second year with the Indianapolis Colts, though, because the team has an out if he fails to do well in 2026.
Seth Walder of ESPN gave Chris Ballard and Indy a C+ for what the team did this offseason. That has merit, but the reasons Walder gives for the grade aren't correct.
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