The Steelers are now back at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex, facing down a long regular season that looks a lot more promising given how things have gone leading up to it. Finishing just above .500 last year, they anticipate being able to compete with any team in the league this season with second-year QB Kenny Pickett leading the way.
They’ve done a great deal to address what they identified as their shortcomings during the offseason, which included addressing the offensive and defensive lines as well as the secondary and the inside linebacker room, which is nearly entirely different from last year. The results have been positive so far.
Even well into the regular season and beyond, there are going to be plenty of questions that need answered. When will the core rookies get to play, or even start? Is the depth sufficient where they upgraded? Can they stand toe-to-toe with the Bengals and the other top teams in the league? We’ll try to frame the conversation in relevant ways as long as you stick with us throughout the season, as we have for many years.
Question: Is CB Joey Porter Jr. finally, for all intents and purposes, a starter?
Joey Porter Jr., the rookie second-round cornerback, played 53 snaps on Sunday against the Los Angeles Rams. That was nearly double the next-highest snap count he’s had in a game so far this season, and the same goes for snap percentage (78 percent, in this case).
He didn’t technically start, as in being on the field for the first snap of the game, but he played more than three-quarters of the snaps. He played more than Levi Wallace, in fact, though Patrick Peterson effectively played every snap.
So is this finally the place at which the Steelers wanted to settle in the secondary? Peterson played about half of his snaps in the slot or in the box, which is what enabled this to happen. That’s what they intended to do with him all along, but it really wasn’t blossoming.
That was all before the bye week. Perhaps they planned to do more after the bye, both for the sake of Peterson and Porter. It gave them the time to get acclimated to their new circumstances over time rather than being thrown into it and being expected to thrive.
But the Rams are a receiver-heavy offense and probably played out of the 11 personnel grouping (three wide receivers) as much or more than anybody that the Steelers have faced. That’s going to dictate playing time generally, but it will be interesting to see where things go from here.
Porter did see a couple more snaps than Wallace, with Chandon Sullivan also getting in some work as an interior defender. Is this what the defense is going to look like now, with Porter playing starter-worthy snaps? If so, it’s about time.
