Alec Pierce is a former three-star prospect (per 247Sports.com) who was the 25th-ranked wide receiver in Illinois. Before attending Cincinnati, he had offers from the Air Force Academy, Army, Ball State and Bowling Green. Pierce played football, volleyball, and basketball and ran track in high school. So it’s not difficult to see his raw athletic talent with the way he blew up the NFL Scouting Combine. At 6-3, 208 pounds, he posted a 4.41 40-yard dash (90th percentile, per Playerprofiler.com), a 95th percentile speed score, 94th percentile burst score, and 96th percentile catch radius.

Pierce was regulated to special teams in 2018, seeing only one target on offense. However, he had his breakout season in 2019, leading the team in receiving yards (652) and seeing a 16.9 percent target share. In 2020, he gutted out six games while dealing with a nagging shoulder injury. Despite dealing with the ailment, he saw improvement across the board in his catch rate (70.8 percent), Yards per route run (2.46, per PFF), and yards after the catch per reception (4.4).