With the 2023 NFL Draft days away, I feel less sure than ever that the Pittsburgh Steelers are going to take a cornerback in the first round. If that indeed proves to be the case, it would greatly increase the odds of Joey Porter Jr. finding his way into the purple and black of the Baltimore Ravens.
Porter, of course, is the son of former Steelers outside linebacker Joey Porter Sr., who played for the team in 1999-2006 and helped them win the 2005 Super Bowl. He also served on the coaching staff in 2014-2018, and many dots over the past few months have connected his son to his former team.
While it’s certainly possible that they draft him, the Ravens very well may should the Steelers go in another direction and he remains available when they select at 22. And it certainly wouldn’t be the end of the world for him, nor for his household.
“I didn’t grow up hating the Ravens. I just knew it was a rivalry and they had some bad blood back in the day, but that’s what makes it fun”, he told Andrew Siciliano on the NFL Network yesterday when asked about the possibility of playing for the Ravens—and about his father supporting it. “He would be proud. He would put on a Ravens jersey if that happened.”
Because of course he would. Any reasonable person would. Former Steelers cornerback Justin Layne’s father grew up a diehard Cleveland Browns fan, and even had his bathroom painted in Browns colors, or something like that. After the Steelers drafted his son, he changed the paint scheme to black and gold (or yellow, as the younger generation might prefer to call it, to the horror of the older generation).
Still, there would be a part of him, I’m sure, that wished it had gone another way, at least initially. Although he didn’t finish his career with the Steelers, he obviously continued to have respect for the organization, as evidenced by his going to work for them on Mike Tomlin’s coaching staff.
And Porter was a main character in some of the legendary Steelers-Ravens rivalry games, though James Harrison managed to pick up right where he left off. The games certainly continued at a fever pitch for a while even after he left in 2007, but up until then, he was right up there with the Ravens’ Ray Lewis as one of the principal voices.
Fans might take it harder, as is often the case. While they may not necessarily want the Steelers to use their first-round pick on Porter’s son—though many surely do—watching him go to the Ravens would be a tough pill for many to swallow, especially for a team that has seemed to draft a number of players Steelers fans were hoping would find their way to Pittsburgh.
