While most of the draft class was signed to deals relatively quickly, it took until the eve of training camp for the Pittsburgh Steelers to get their top two rookie under contract. First-round deals are fairly standard at this point outside of some language issues, but the contract for 32nd-overall CB Joey Porter Jr. was trickier for multiple reasons.
The most obvious reason is the fact that the 32nd-overall pick in 2023 happened to fall in the second round because of a forfeited first-round selection leaving only 31 picks. In almost every other year for the past couple decades, pick 32 would be the last pick of the first round instead of the first pick of the second. The absence of a fifth-year option is just one of the issues to tackle.
But general manager Omar Khan alluded to another issue as well, of which we were aware, but the acknowledgement is still significant, referring to QB Will Levis’ slide into the second round. “The fact that there was a quarterback behind him, I think that maybe had something to do with it”, he told reporters yesterday, via the team’s website, “but he got done in time for camp, so there were no issues from our end”.
It’s an issue that we wrote about weeks in advance, Levis, drafted 33rd overall, remaining unsigned deep into July, and one that we tackled yet again after that deal finally got done. He got over 90 percent of his contract fully guaranteed at signing.
While final hard details have not been made public yet, Porter’s deal is supposed to be worth $9,618,348, and it’s been reported that the first three years of the deal would be fully guaranteed. The deal also is reported to include a signing bonus just shy of $4 million.
Touted as one of the top cornerback prospects in this year’s class, Porter did not expect to slide out of the first round at all. Indeed, he felt the Steelers would draft him 17th overall—and they might have had OT Broderick Jones not been on the board at 14, prompting them to trade up to get him.
Still, he surely got a pretty good deal for himself, even if it wasn’t quite the same as a first-round contract, the differences at the end of the round becoming increasingly negligible. While he was prudently careful in how he commented on his contract situation, he did say that it was never a big deal.
“I really wasn’t getting antsy or nervous”, he said, via the team’s website. “Me and the whole staff had a good understanding of what was going on. With the numbers and stuff, I really can’t talk about that too much. I’ll leave that with my agents”.
With the deal done before the start of training camp, the Steelers have no major outstanding business hanging over their heads and as an organization from top to bottom can be singularly focused on the task at hand—including Porter—which is simply to grow and develop on Chuck Noll Field.
