Even though the Seattle Seahawks and the usual suspects of the AFC appear to have recaptured the national conversation, it wasn’t that long ago that the Indianapolis Colts were proving to be the talk of the town. Throughout the first eight weeks of the season, the former New York Giant in Daniel Jones had managed to surprise both fans and analysts alike by guiding Indy towards its 7-1 start while also producing top tier scoring totals.
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It was the best regular season start the Colts have seen since the days of Peyton Manning, and suffice to say, that’s now proven to be more than enough for the franchise to at least place a transition tag on Jones. According to NFL.com’s Judy Battista, however, even though the move is geared towards keeping Jones in Indianapolis, there’s still a bit of risk involved with this specific kind of tag.
“This is a calculated risk by the Colts,” Battista prefaced. “But it’s really not a tremendous risk by the Colts, because, certainly, they expect the market to be at a certain point. And perhaps it’s a little bit dampened for Daniel Jones because he is coming off the Achilles injury… They clearly are not expecting that the market is going to come in and blow Daniel Jones away and then they won’t be able to match. They want to keep Daniel Jones.”
Suffice to say, unless a team is willing to essentially come out and overpay for the rights to a quarterback who will be unavailable for most of the offseason, then it’s highly unlikely that the particulars of the transition tag would actually be in play for Jones and his newfound franchise. “The risk is pretty minimal for the Indianapolis Colts,” Battista concludes.
With that being said, however, the real challenge for Indianapolis this offseason lies in retaining the services of Alec Pierce. The 25 year old finally broke out in 2025, recording the first 1,000+ receiving yard season of his career, and has hauled in 13 touchdowns throughout the past two years.
Current contract projections see Pierce signing a three- or four-year deal that’s in the $75- to $85-million range, and when you pair that with the fact that they are currently more than $4 million over the cap, it becomes clear that now is not the time to invest heavily into the 28-year-old quarterback. The transition tag will allow the Colts to loosely retain the rights to Jones while prioritizing a deal with Pierce, and it’ll also give the former Giant an opportunity to prove that he is actually deserving of a full-blown contract extension after all, so while it may seem a bit unconventional at first, this is a pretty savvy move from the Colts’ front office.
