In the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Week Nine win over the Tennessee Titans, rookie CB Joey Porter Jr. made a big statement while matching up against WR DeAndre Hopkins. Hopkins has been one of the game’s top receivers since being drafted in 2013. He was also riding the wave of his best game of the season, a 128-yard, three-touchdown performance, the week prior.
So you can imagine head coach Mike Tomlin’s response when Porter approached him asking to shadow Hopkins.
“He liked the competitiveness that I had enough courage to go and ask him that,” Porter said on The Jim Rome Show. “He also thought it was kind of crazy ’cause I was a rookie asking him that type of assignment. But that’s the type of stuff he looked for in a guy that’s out there willing to show his talents.”
The experiment was a resounding success with Porter allowing just one catch for 17 yards to Hopkins. He followed him on 26 of his 36 routes run, so it isn’t a matter of a small sample size. Porter shut down one of the game’s top receivers.
Tomlin didn’t make this decision in a vacuum, as he told the media earlier in the week that it had to make sense for both sides. The Titans had the tendency to run away from wherever Hopkins was lined up, so Tomlin was also trying to limit Porter’s exposure to having to tackle and play against the run.
Porter expanded on why he wanted to follow Hopkins during the Jim Rome segment.
“As a kid, I used to watch him go against all the top graded DBs, and I got to see how he stacked up against them,” he said. “So I already knew, once I got myself into the NFL, I needed to see how I was gonna stack up against him.”
With Porter passing the first big test of his career, the defensive coaching staff will have growing confidence in him, which should allow for more situations where he can shadow the team’s top receiving target. Defensive coordinator Teryl Austin said as much Thursday during his weekly press availability.
The Steelers’ next opponent, the Green Bay Packers, don’t have an established veteran like Hopkins on their roster, but it will be interesting to see how Porter is deployed. Will he follow a guy like WR Christian Watson, or will the Steelers revert to their normal left-side and right-side assignments?
