WESTFIELD – Colts head coach Shane Steichen beamed Wednesday afternoon describing how his star wide receiver Alec Pierce ran through private individual drills earlier in the week at the team’s indoor facility at Grand Park. Absent from the team’s entire offseason on-field program as Pierce progresses through what’s closing in on a five-month rehab process for a late-March ankle surgery, the team’s No. 1 receiver is expected to be back “sooner than later,” but he continues to progress out of public view.
“Alec’s in a great spot right now. He’s doing really good,” Steichen said Wednesday after his team’s joint practice with the Falcons. “I watched him work out yesterday in the indoor. He’s moving around really good. Hopefully, we’ll have him back sooner than later.”
The looming question, though – one Steichen answered Thursday – is why the fifth-year receiver, who signed a four-year, $114 million deal in mid-March to remain a Colt, has begun on-field workouts outside the team’s normal practice windows.
The team does, at times, have players – like running back DJ Giddens did Wednesday and Thursday – go through warmups and individual drills before stepping off to the side to work with a trainer on mobility, stretching or other drills while the rest of the team completes 11-on-11 and 7-on-7 team-centric drills. The idea would be to let the player work on the repetitive motions of the game in a drill-like environment without risking the hard hits and unpredictability that full-team drills bring.
Steichen said the Colts still aren’t quite ready to put Pierce in those situations, despite general manager Chris Ballard stating again last week that he expects Pierce to be ready for the team’s regular season opener in just over three weeks against the Ravens Sept. 13.
“I think it’s just acclimating to the pads and stuff and getting back with bodies around him,” Steichen said Thursday. “But he looked great yesterday in the indoor and so, like I said, he’ll be back sooner than later.”
Steichen maintained that the team’s signing of veteran receiver Keenan Allen on Wednesday was not indicative of Pierce’s rehab progress, though Ballard told reporters 23 days ago that he expected Pierce to miss “a week or two” of training camp.
More than three weeks later, Pierce has been seen in cleats doing work with trainers off to the side a couple times in the last 10 days, but his presence throughout training camp has largely been while sporting a white Colts-branded T-shirt with a ‘14’ on the back, never far from the ear of his wide receiver coach Reggie Wayne.
“When Alec gets back, we’ll get hm back in, rolling a little bit as he develops back into full-speed,” Steichen said. “The guys will rotate. I mean, we’ll have a good flow for that into next week and the following week, and we’ll go from there.”
Joel A. Erickson and Nathan Brown cover the Colts all season. Get more coverage on IndyStarTV and with the Colts Insider newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Why Colts WR Alec Pierce has returned to on-field workouts but not in team practices
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