Mike Tomlin may be confident that Joey Porter Jr.’s “serial killer’s mentality” will help him move past the penalties, but could he now be facing an uphill battle?
Former NFL GM Doug Whaley spoke about what challenges Porter may be facing moving forward.
“When we were in Buffalo, we used to have a study and the coaches, especially Rex Ryan, would have a day where someone would just come in and talk about the officials and the officiating crew,” Whaley said via 93.7 The Fan’s Morning Show. “Rex would go pregame and talk to officials and like, ‘Hey, that Joey Porter Jr., if you watch film, he’s awfully handsy.’ So teams are going to be alerting officials about this. His reputation is preceding himself.
“The thing about sports, and especially in football, reputations are easy to get, hard to live down, so he’s gonna have to be extra, extra careful to really play as clean as possible.”
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, or a negative feedback loop for players with these types of issues. Porter talked about how he will not let the refs change his play style and pointed to his long arms as a reason why it looks worse than it is. He is already feeling the effects of what Whaley is talking about. That isn’t happenstance. That is opposing coaches highlighting it before the game and the refs doing their homework, too.
The bottom line is having three penalties in a game can’t happen, let alone the six he committed against the Cincinnati Bengals.
Porter is now tied for the lead in defensive pass interference penalties at six. That is one every other game, though interestingly all of them have been called in away games. They have come in bunches. He either gets three or more penalties per game or none at all. Only four of the six Sunday were accepted by the Bengals. One could argue a couple of them were ticky-tack penalties.
The one in the end zone in particular was completely uncatchable, which is supposed to negate a DPI penalty.
“Even on the ticky-tack fouls that most people wouldn’t get flagged for, he may get flagged and possibly will get flagged just because he has that reputation,” Whaley said.
Porter now has to work extra hard to shed the reputation because it is only going to get harder for him at this point. He had this reputation in college and then struggled with it during his rookie season last year. This year has gotten even worse.
Will he be able to shake that? That’s the big question, and what could be the difference between him becoming a top shutdown corner in the league or an average starter who can be a liability with the penalties.
