Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Alec Pierce quietly had a very respectable rookie campaign. Fantasy managers should look to investing in sophomore wide receivers, but is Pierce the right guy to target? Should fantasy football managers draft Pierce at his ADP this season?
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Alec Pierce’s Fantasy Outlook for the 2023 NFL Season
The fantasy community is way more excited about Treylon Burks and Skyy Moore this season than Pierce. Yet, Pierce had a better rookie season than both of them. Compared to Moore, it wasn’t even close.
Pierce caught 41 passes for 593 yards and two touchdowns as a rookie. He surpassed the 500-yard threshold we look for from rookie wide receivers (something neither Burks nor Moore did).
Under most circumstances, Pierce would be a player to target. He’s a sophomore WR coming off a solid rookie campaign. Unfortunately, the circumstances he finds himself in are less than ideal.
For starters, Pierce might be a good receiver, but he’s not a great one. Michael Pittman Jr. is the clear WR1, and Pierce is no threat to his volume.
Next, the Colts drafted another wide receiver, Josh Downs, in the third round. While Downs operates in a completely different part of the field than Pierce, he’s more of a threat to Pierce than either of them is to Pittman.
Finally, we have Anthony Richardson. The rookie passer will undoubtedly provide the Colts’ offense with better play than Matt Ryan gave them last season. However, rookie quarterbacks are not good for wide receivers … and neither are mobile quarterbacks. Richardson is both.
Last season, the Colts had a 58% neutral game script pass rate. In terms of overall volume, they threw the ball 604 times. There is simply no scenario in which they get anywhere near that number of pass attempts with a rookie mobile QB. My projections don’t even have them reaching 500 attempts.
Pierce is on an offense likely to see a 20% dip in overall passing volume. And he has more competition for targets.
Even if he significantly improves upon his 14% target share from last season, it will be of a small target pie. It’s difficult to paint the picture of Pierce being a useful fantasy asset in 2023.
Is Pierce a Good Fantasy Pick?
Fantasy managers clearly understand the plight Pierce finds himself in. He’s got a WR69 ADP, No. 181 overall. It’s a coin flip as to whether you see him taken in a standard-sized 12-team league.
I have Pierce ranked as my WR72, which is right in line with the consensus. He is WR67 in our PFN consensus rankings — a negligible difference this far down on the list.
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Obviously, I have to rank him somewhere. And normally, I would like to chase the upside of a second-year player like Pierce. However, on this year’s Colts team, I fail to see any plausible path to even a WR4 season.
As a result, Pierce is not someone fantasy managers should target, even with their final WR pick.
