If Joey Porter Sr. was on the Steelers’ coaching staff with George Pickens already there, how would that have gone? Not terribly well, from the sounds of it. The Steelers reportedly traded Pickens, primarily due to issues with professionalism, which disqualified him from receiving a second contract.
Beyond the things we all saw during games, Pickens was also reportedly frequently late, which Coach Porter wouldn’t have tolerated. Appearing recently on the Not Just Football podcast, he spoke about his time on the staff. At one point, he seemed to allude to the George Pickens situation, without addressing it directly.
“Do not fuck up Friday, just for the team,” Porter said. “You show up late, it’s already fucked up. Because this is the last dress rehearsal. We don’t want nobody to be late that day, to no meetings, to no practice, nothing. I used to think they were just being anal and tripping.”
He said he didn’t realize until he started coaching how bad losing hurt. As a coach, he said, “I don’t get to right my own wrongs”. Instead, Porter has to instill in players, like George Pickens, the game plan and trust that they will execute it. And when the plan—or the execution—doesn’t work, you blame yourself. But if your player isn’t even showing up on time, that’s another issue.
“I’m responsible for these guys, and these guys [are] gonna be a reflection of me. I’m really about to find out how much my guys fuck with me or not. Do they really like me or not?” Porter said, proceeding with comments that may have referenced Pickens. “For real, because some of the stuff that goes on that you hear about? I would be devastated if my players did that. Didn’t respect me enough to be where they’re supposed to be or shit like that. That’s all respect level there.”
Porter is still in and around Pittsburgh and surely knows everything that went down with Pickens. After all, Porter’s son is on the team, so he would also have a first-hand account from the locker room. While he coached linebackers and not wide receivers, the sentiment is the same.
Of course, Porter dealt with James Harrison being actively subordinate in his room in 2017, including a snoring protest. But that was James Harrison, not George Pickens. Harrison was a peer of Porter, a literal former teammate. It’s still unacceptable, but in a way more understandable. You’re more likely to show up your brother than your father, so to speak.
Mike Tomlin has a history of tolerating certain behaviors up to a point of usefulness. Joey Porter Sr. wasn’t there for George Pickens, but he witnessed Antonio Brown and all of his special accommodations. I’m sure he had some opinions about that at that time as well, and probably shared them with Tomlin.
But Tomlin is the head coach, and unless Art Rooney II overrules him, what he says goes. This offseason, he said it was time to trade Pickens, and I have a suspicion that Porter approved. No slight to Zach Azzanni and his predecessors, but I wonder how Pickens would have behaved in Porter’s room.
