Darius Slayton was watching last Sunday night’s game between the Colts and Chiefs, which meant he saw Colts wideout Alec Pierce leave the game after aggravating a heel injury.
Slayton said on Wednesday that he “wasn’t cheering for that,” but he knew that Pierce’s injury might create an opportunity for him to land his first job since being released by the Giants this summer. Not only did the Colts have an immediate need for receiver help, they also have Slayton’s former Giants teammate Daniel Jones as their quarterback.
That history likely played a role in Slayton signing with the Colts this week and he said he expects to get right back into a groove with the quarterback.
“Really enjoyed playing alongside him,” Slayton said, via the team’s website. “He’s a good quarterback. He’s smart. He can spin it. . . . Philosophically, I think we see the field pretty similarly, and that’s something that worked well for us in the past. And I expect it to work well for us going forward.”
Pierce averaged more than 20 yards a catch in each of the last two seasons, but Slayton has not been that kind of wideout during his time in the NFL so the Colts will have to adapt their offense to the players available as they try to find their first win of the season.
The Texans were without six players in Wednesday’s practice, five of them rehabbing injuries.
Offensive tackle Trent Brown (knee/wrist), defensive end Jadeveon Clowney (knee), wide receiver Nico Collins (hamstring), linebacker Jake Hummel (groin), offensive guard Ed Ingram (groin) and tight end Dalton Schultz (rest) did not practice.
Collins injured his hamstring in practice last week and missed the Week 2 loss to the Bengals.
Defensive end Will Anderson Jr. (rest), defensive end Logan Hall (knee) and safety M.J. Stewart (knee) were limited.
Safety Reed Blankenship (thumb) and linebacker Wade Woodaz (thumb) were full participants.
The Colts will not have receiver Alec Pierce for at least the next four games.
Via multiple reporters, head coach Shane Steichen told reporters in his Wednesday press conference that Pierce is being placed on injured reserve after aggravating the heel he had surgically repaired during the offseason in Sunday night’s loss to the Chiefs.
For now, Pierce will try to rehab the injury without undergoing another procedure. But there is no current timeline for his return.
Steichen added that Pierce hit his benchmarks for recovery and the team’s medical staff had cleared him to play.
“We never would have put him on the field if we didn’t feel good about it and he didn’t feel good about it,” Steichen said, via Joel A. Erickson of the Indianapolis Star.
Pierce, who signed a four-year, $114 million deal with the Colts in March, caught four passes for 61 yards in the season opener before catching an 11-yard pass on Sunday night before departing the game.
Pierce registered his first 1,000-yard season last year. He led the league in yards per reception in both 2024 and 2025.
In March, linebacker Jonathan Owens left the Bears in free agency for the Colts. Before Owens and his wife, gymnast Simone Biles, left Chicago, they found themselves the victims of a robbery.
In a video posted Tuesday on social media, Biles said that “three men in masks came to our house and stole my Porsche” before they moved out of Chicago.
The car was recovered.
It’s not clear when the theft occurred. And while some have interpreted Biles’s quotes to mean that their home was invaded, that’s not entirely clear from her video.
Either way, it makes Owens the latest known NFL victim of a theft at his home.
Owens, 31, has played for the Cardinals, Texans, Packers, Bears, and Colts. He has appeared in 84 regular-season games with 35 starts.
Based on the way the respective teams played in Week 1, many expected Sunday night’s game between the Colts and Chiefs to be a snoozer. Instead, it was an overtime thriller.
The game attracted 24.3 million viewers on average for NBC and Peacock.
The audience, which peaked at 27.4 million between 9:15 and 9:30 p.m. ET, made it the most-watched Week 2 Sunday night game since 2015.
It was also the fourth highest figure for an overtime game in 21 seasons of Sunday Night Football on NBC. In that span, 22 Sunday night games have gone to overtime.
The Sunday night slate continues in five days, with the Broncos hosting the Rams.
