March 9 is the officially unofficial start of NFL free agency in 2026. March 11 is the beginning of the new league year, and players can make their anticipated signings, well...official. Will that include Daniel Jones and Alec Pierce with the Indianapolis Colts? We can't be so sure yet.
Or can we? Indy has options for one, but not both. General manager Chris Ballard might choose to do neither. That all relates to the franchise tag, of course. To force each player to stay with the team, Ballard could slap the tag on Pierce or Jones and end any drama of them going anywhere else.
Teams can currently use the tag to keep a player around, or at least get two first-round draft picks back in return (for a player with a non-exclusive franchise tag) should they leave, and no team is likely to pay a player and give another team those selections. The issue is that a team placing the tag is forced to pay a player top dollar.
Indianapolis Colts have a question: Franchise tag Daniel Jones or Alec Pierce?
For instance, should Jones get tagged, he would earn $47.4 million in 2026. For Pierce, the tag value is $28 million. Both those numbers might be a bit more than either would be paid in the open market, but could be close enough to where the Colts will use the option of the tag.
The question is which one? Losing Jones basically means that Indy has to start over yet again at the sport's most important position. Could Riley Leonard or Anthony Richardson take over (and do well) at QB1? That would be a huge risk, and one probably not worth taking by a general manager and a head coach who need to make the postseason next year or get out of town.
If Pierce leaves, and Jones is retained, the quarterback loses his only true deep threat and a wide receiver who ascended to WR1 status this season. Assuming the team doesn't release Michael Pittman Jr. and save $24 million, Indianapolis would be left with a Pierce-less receiver group that is sure-handed but relatively pedestrian.
The best-case scenario is that Daniel Jones and Alec Pierce both come back, and the Indianapolis Colts offense is humming in 2026 like it is the first half of 2025. The franchise tag dilemma, though, was brought to fans by Chris Ballard, who seemingly refuses to be aggressive in re-signing players.
He could have signed Pierce and Jones to extensions during the season. He waited, and that is going to cost the team financially, one way or another.