Many fans came into the 2023 NFL Draft thinking, even hoping, that Penn State CB Joey Porter Jr. would be the Pittsburgh Steelers’ first-round draft pick. That didn’t quite happen but they still landed him 32nd overall, the top of round two, after he surprisingly slid down the draft boards.
While he would’ve preferred to have gone to Pittsburgh at 17 (they ended up trading to 14 to select OT Broderick Jones), he knows he’s in the right place, where his father, Joey Porter Jr., both played and coached and where he even acted as a ball boy once upon a time.
Aside from his bloodlines and familiarity, he has the physical and mental qualities that tend to make up some of the best cornerbacks in the game today. NFL analyst Bucky Brooks believes it may not take long for him to reach that level in Pittsburgh.
“Joey Porter Jr. has an opportunity to be a lockdown defender for the Pittsburgh Steelers”, he recently said on the NFL Network, breaking down his top rookies to watch in training camps around the league. “When you see the size, the length, the pedigree, he checks off a lot of boxes in terms of being able to be an elite defender on the perimeter in this scheme where he’s playing”.
“Bump and run, maybe a little zone, a little man-to-man, he has all of those traits”, he continued, “and the fact that he has the bloodlines and understands what it’s like to play in that city, in that town, wearing that uniform, I think he’s ready. I think he’s ready to be one of the top corners very, very early in his NFL career”.
The way things are going, it seems likely that he’ll have that opportunity. The rookie has been getting extensive work with the first-team defense, and more often than not he has held his own. He may have lost a rep or two against the team’s top wide receivers in Diontae Johnson and George Pickens, but there’s no shame in that. The important thing is that he responded quickly and well from those defeats.
The Steelers added Patrick Peterson to the cornerback position this offseason to replace Cameron Sutton, who departed in free agency after spending his first six seasons in Pittsburgh. They also retain Levi Wallace from last season.
While Peterson has historically been an outside cornerback, the team has been moving him all around the field during training camp, even giving him some looks at safety, making it increasingly likely that all three will be on the field together.
One might say that the biggest question is just how soon Porter moves from a 45-snaps-a-game sub-package defender to a 60-snaps-a-game full-time starter. That could happen as soon as the start of the regular season.
But he still has to earn it. The early returns have been positive, but that was practice in shorts. The pads come on Tuesday. The preseason is around the corner. If he keeps passing the tests set out in front of him, he’ll be on his way to fulfilling Brooks’ projection sooner rather than later.
