Free agent wide receiver Alec Pierce is a candidate to be franchise tagged this offseason by the Indianapolis Colts .
Teams can use the franchise tag once per offseason on a pending free agent to prevent them from hitting the open market.
If applied, a franchise tag is essentially a one-year deal. The contract amount is predetermined and takes into account which position the tagged player plays.
According to Over the Cap , "franchise tag figures are based upon the top five salaries at each respective position."
The likely goal behind using the franchise tag on Pierce isn't to have him play out the 2026 season on that contract.
For one, from the sounds of it, GM Chris Ballard would like Pierce around beyond just one more season.
But in addition to that, using the franchise tag isn't very salary cap-friendly. Per OTC, the franchise tag for a wide receiver in 2026 is projected to be $28.82 million , and since this is a one-year deal, that figure is what Pierce's cap hit would be for this season as well.
So the reason that the Colts would tag Pierce would likely be similar to why they tagged Michael Pittman during the 2024 offseason.
Doing so would prevent Pierce from becoming a free agent and then buy him and the team more time to work out a long-term deal -- which is how things played out with Pittman. An extension would then lower Pierce's 2026 cap hit quite a bit versus playing out this season on the franchise tag.
The deadline for teams to use the franchise tag is 4:00 PM ET on March 3rd.
This article originally appeared on Colts Wire: Why Colts could use franchise tag on free agent Alec Pierce
