I don’t blame Pat McAfee. He was just saying what everyone says. Besides, he meant it as a compliment. When he referred to Indianapolis Colts’ newly minted WR1 Alec Pierce as “Mr. Long Ball,” it was part of a segment discussing how good the Colts offense could be in 2026.
To be honest, I think he said, “Mr. Long Ball.” It might have been “Mr. Deep Ball” or “Sir Alec of the Bomb.” They are all starting to run together in my head. The conventional wisdom is always the same. Alec Pierce is the league’s top deep-ball threat. And that’s all he is.
That is the type of analysis that you get from people who may know football but do not watch every snap the Colts play. It’s what you get from pundits who watch a highlight reel of some obscure college prospect and push him into the first round of the draft.
Indianapolis Colts' Alec Pierce stakes his claim as one of the league’s best receivers
Real scouts – and I want to make clear at this point that I am not one of them – watch all the plays – not just the good ones. That’s the only way to really get a picture of what a player is and isn’t.
And Alec Pierce – if you did watch every Colts’ play of the 2025 season – is way more than Mr. Long Ball.
Sure, he’s the best deep ball threat. Two straight years of leading the league in yards per catch earn you that title. Two straight years of going better than 20 yards per catch puts you in some pretty rare company.
Pierce averaged 21.3 YPC in 2025. The only player to better that number in the last 15 years was … wait for it … Alec Pierce in 2024. You have to go back to 2010 and Eagles’ terror DeSean Jackson to find that kind of long-ball prowess.
But if that’s all Alec Pierce did, he would not have just received a four-year, $114 million contract to remain in Indianapolis. That makes him the tenth-highest-paid receiver in the league.
Pierce ran a wider range of patterns in 2025, and he improved in virtually every area. With Michael Pittman, Jr., Josh Downs, and Tyler Warren all capable of working near the line, Pierce was still the Colts’ long-ball option, but his route tree expanded.
This can be a hard thing to prove through stats, but let’s give it a shot.
Before 2025, Alec Pierce had caught 11 touchdown passes in the NFL. The average length of those catches was 30.5 yards. In 2025, that average dropped to 27.7 yards. He was still capable of going deep, as he did with his 66-yard TD against Houston in Week 18, but in general, he was catching more mid-range touchdowns.
If a ten percent drop in his average length of TD catch does impress you, look at it another way. In 2023 and 2024, every single one of Pierce’s nine touchdowns came on receptions under 15 yards or over 35 yards.
In 2025, half of his six TDs came on passes between 15 and 20 yards. In other words, Pierce grew into a threat in the intermediate passing game.
Let’s look at this one more way. In 2024, five of Pierce’s TDs came in the fourth quarter of games. There’s nothing bad about that. Sometimes they were game winners. Other times, they were garbage-time scores.
But in 2025, all six of his scores came in the first half of games. What that means is that Shane Steichen and Jim Bob Cooter had recognized that, though Michael Pittman was still the face of the Colts’ receiving corps, Alec Pierce was its new top dog.
They grew increasingly concerned with getting him involved in the game from early on. He was no longer simply the secret weapon who was deployed late.
Pierce improved in almost every statistical category for a receiver in 2025. These were stats that bespeak an all-around pass catcher, not simply a long-ball threat.
He had the lowest drop rate of his career – a paltry 1.2 percent. He recorded the highest QB rating when targeted in his career as well. His number 112.4 wouldn’t be especially good for a tight end or a possession receiver.
But for a receiver capable of making plays downfield, it is exceptional. He has improved that number in each of his four seasons, from the mid-70s as a rookie to over 100 in the last two seasons. As a point of reference, Michael Pittman, playing with the same QBs, averaged about 85 in ’24-’25.
Pierce’s average depth-of-target dropped two-and-a-half yards last season, more proof that he is running a wider range of patterns. But his yards-per-target remained the exact same, showing a more efficient receiver. And as you would expect from a legit WR1, he registered the highest catch percentage and success rate of his career last season.
OK – that’s a lot of data. All of it points toward a receiver who is growing into something much more balanced and complete than a Mr. Long Ball. But if you forget all that and simply watch him play, you will see someone who runs crosses and outs. Makes tough catches at key moments.
If you don’t feel like taking my word for it or going back and watching every Colts game from 2025, just watch Week 18 against Houston. That’s the one where Pierce caught two touchdowns and almost had a third before the most innocuous of infractions got him ejected before the fourth quarter. You got the full Alec Pierce effect in those three quarters.
Early, he simply blew past a sleeping corner for an easy 66-yard touchdown. Later, he showed strong hands, making a catch in traffic on a short out. Early in the second half, he split a double team and hauled in a 53-yard bomb from Riley Leonard, coming up just short of the end zone and setting up Leonard’s subsequent TD run.
But maybe the best sequence came late in the first half. At the two-minute warning, Pierce drew a 30-yard pass interference penalty on safety K’Von Wallace. A few plays later, facing third-and-goal from the Houston eight, Pierce ran a quick slant, then once he had gained leverage, broke back toward the corner of the end zone, giving Leonard a surprisingly easy throw on such a compressed field.
What makes that play so encouraging is not the mere fact of the perfect route. It’s that it came against Derek Stingley, Jr. That’s the same Derek Stingley, Jr. who has been first team All-Pro in each of the last two seasons.
A player who only runs deep routes does not cleanly beat one of the best corners in the league on a red zone third down for a touchdown. That’s what the best receivers in the league do. That’s what Alec Pierce is growing into right before the eyes of Colts’ fans.