If Joey Porter Jr. was destined to become a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers, then that was news to him. Not only did they pass him by in the first round, but they gave him no indications they were targeting him. Despite the doubts, he told Cameron Heyward he genuinely had no idea he might be a Steeler.
“Not one time”, he said on the Not Just Football podcast, did Porter feel like the Steelers would draft him. “It was crazy. Everybody would tell me, ‘Nah, you’re just saying that’”, but he insists he really felt that way.
Of course, Porter wasn’t having the same conversations with Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin that Heyward had. “Mike T. came to me one day, and he was like, ‘I’m gonna get that boy because I’m gonna put him up against GP [George Pickens] every single day’”, he said.
Joey Porter Jr. is the son of Joey Porter Sr., who played outside linebacker for the Steelers for many years. While Tomlin never coached his father, the senior Porter served on his coaching staff for a few years. During that time, the younger Porter and Tomlin’s sons grew a tight bond.
Yet despite their off-field relationships, Porter says Tomlin gave him the cold shoulder during the pre-draft process. When Heyward told him the story about Tomlin saying he was going to come get him, he responded, “He could’ve fooled me”, relaying an amusing anecdote.
“When I was at the Combine, I seen [Tomlin] in the hallway”, Porter said. “I was like, ‘Oh, what’s good, Unc?’. He walked right past me. Didn’t even look at me, make eye contact, acknowledge that I was there. He just walked right past me. I was like, ‘Okay, well that’s what that was’”.
Of course, a couple of months later, the Steelers drafted Joey Porter Jr. at the top of the second round. While they felt they couldn’t pass up Broderick Jones, for whom they traded up in the first round, they stayed put for Porter. They could have retrieved a hefty draft haul by moving off of that first pick in the second round.
They chose not to do so, however, because they liked Porter that much, having a first-round grade on him. And so far, he looks like he deserved that grade because he has already become their top cornerback. While they brought him along gradually, by the end of the year, he was shadowing No. 1 receivers.
The Steelers often poorly disguise their draft interest in players, particularly in the first round. If they couldn’t draft Jones, they very well may have drafted Porter. The thing is, they didn’t have to do much work on him because they already knew his life story.
Joey Porter Jr. was born to be a Steeler, and Mike Tomlin knew that, having watched him grow up. Omar Khan recalls him running around the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex as a little kid. So, if he got the cold shoulder at the Combine just to mask some of that overwhelmingly obvious interest, that’s a small price to pay for the end result.
