INDIANAPOLIS The NFL offseason is in full swing with offseason workouts starting and the NFL Draft taking place this week.Colts general manager Chris Ballard spoke at the Colts training facility on Monday about the upcoming NFL Draft and shared injury updates on several Colts players.One of those updates was with wide receiver Alec Pierce. The fifth-year receiver signed a four-year, $116 million dollar contract extension with Indianapolis in March. The deal included $84 million dollars guaranteed.Ballard said Pierce played through some pain in his ankle for parts of last season.Last year for a lot of the season he kept dealing with some pain in his ankle, Ballard said. After the season we talked about if it was good enough, can we get through it again another year. Right before we signed him and after we signed him I started asking questions and he said I can play through this again. I knew he was hurting at times last year so finally after consulting with multiple doctors and him, he had a clean up done.Ballard said getting the clean up surgery now would be better than having Pierce play through ankle pain throughout next season.Itll be training camp so you wont see him during OTAs [Organized team activities], Ballard said. Its a three month recovery. We dont expect any long term repercussions. More of it got to where he was really having to maintenance it a lot last year and the pain and so he had to kind of fight through that. At the end of the day I said you can play with this. Do you want to play with it or knock it out? So he decided to knock it out.Pierces $116 million contract extension made him the highest-paid free agent receiver in NFL history. ...read more read less