What are the best and worst moves Indianapolis Colts general manager Chris Ballard has made so far in the 2026 offseason? That was the question Pro Football Focus (subscription required) writer Zoltan Buday set out to answer last week. Actually, Buday was restricting himself to free agency moves, and he was answering the question for all 32 teams.
Our job is a little easier. We’re just focusing on the Colts.
To refresh your memory, Ballard was entering the offseason with a decent salary cap cushion but with a lot of key pending free agents. He knew he could get some pretty good players in the draft, but without a first round pick, he was unlikely to get a genuine difference maker.
What Indianapolis Colts' Chris Ballard has gotten right and what he has gotten wrong this offseason
Best move
According to Buday, Ballard’s best move was re-signing Alec Pierce to a four-year, $114 million contract. The deal makes Pierce the 12th-highest-paid wide receiver in the league.
Some analysts thought this was an overreach for a player who has never even been in the top two for targets on his own team. They think of Pierce as a dangerous deep threat and nothing more.
Buday knows better. He knows that Pierce is an ascending player who showed a lot more versatility playing with Daniel Jones last season. He will run a wider variety of routes in 2026 and will clearly become Indy’s most-targeted wideout, perhaps competing with second-year tight end Tyler Warren for the overall team lead.
Perhaps even more importantly, re-signing Pierce proved that the Colts are a franchise that can identify, develop, and then retain high-end talent. Losing him on the brink of stardom would have been a devastating blow. Plenty of other teams wanted Alec Pierce, and the fact that Ballard pulled it off is a real credit to his leadership. So Buday got this one right.
Best Move: Re-signing Alec Pierce
Worst move
Here, Buday ran into a problem. Other than signing Alec Pierce, Chris Ballard has done very little in free agency this offseason. Is there really a “worst move” when he has made so few moves of note?
What Buday chose was actually not technically a free agent signing, though we can cut him some slack on this. Daniel Jones was not really a free agent. He had been transition-tagged, which meant the Colts maintained control over his contract.
The quarterback and Ballard agreed to a contract extension just as free agency began. Besides the Pierce deal, this has been the only other major move Chris Ballard has made so far.
Buday chose it as the worst because he argued that the team is paying Jones too much. That may be true, but failing to pay him would have been a catastrophe. The Colts do not have another quarterback capable of starting. Jones was very good for the first half of 2025, and assuming he returns to full health this season, there is no reason to think he will not play well in 2026.
This was not the worst move because Ballard had no choice. Reaching any kind of reasonable deal with Jones was actually a good move. You can argue that allowing himself to get into this position was a bad move by Ballard, but that hardly seems fair. The Colts have been looking for a long-term answer at QB ever since Andrew Luck left town. They now have one.
I suppose you could say that trading away two crucial players in Zaire Franklin and Michael Pittman, Jr., without really securing replacements, was the worst move. But those moves were only tangentially related to free agency, freeing up money from the Pierce and Jones deals.
Letting three starters walk in free agency may have been a worse cumulative move. Nick Cross would not have been very expensive to retain. The same applies to rotational tackle Neville Gallimore.
But if I’m looking at the worst move in free agency, I am choosing between the two following decisions…
Ballard failed to get a reliable linebacker. Perhaps he will re-sign Germaine Pratt, but he has seemed disinclined to do so up to now. Reaching a bargain basement one-year deal with Akeem Davis-Gaither barely moves the needle at all.
Ballard should have signed a player like Alex Singleton or taken a chance on Dre Greenlaw. They would have cost $4-5 million more than Davis-Gaither, but they would have made a much bigger difference on the Colts defense.
Ballard ended up paying about that price for Michael Clemons, an edge with the New York Jets over the past four seasons. Clemons has undeniable physical ability, but he has never shown that he can perform consistently.
In four full seasons, he has managed a total of 8.5 sacks and 13 tackles behind the line. I hope he proves me wrong, but there is nothing so far in Michael Clemons’ career that suggests he is worth the three-year, $17 million deal Ballard gave him. Therefore…
Worst move: Signing Michael Clemons to a three year deal