Joey Porter Jr is supposed to be the guy locking down Pittsburgh's secondary heading into a pivotal season. Instead he's stuck on the PUP list with a back injury and, according to his own head coach, stuck in a contract negotiation that's going nowhere.
Mike McCarthy didn't dance around it. He told reporters the two sides are at an "impasse," a word that lands differently when it's coming from the coach and not just an anonymous source. Adam Schefter passed the news along, crediting the reporting to bepryor, and it immediately set off alarm bells around the league.
Head coach Mike McCarthy said the Pittsburgh Steelers are at an “impasse” with Joey Porter Jr. as the cornerback remains sidelined on the physically unable to perform list. Story via @bepryor: https://t.co/tmufBUbqER
Porter, the 32nd overall pick in the 2023 draft and son of former Steelers linebacker Joey Porter Sr, is entering a critical year of his rookie deal. Reports have pegged his asking price north of $30 million a year, in line with what Denzel Ward and Devon Witherspoon just landed on the open cornerback market. Pittsburgh has historically been reluctant to negotiate once the regular season starts, which puts real pressure on both sides to figure this out fast.
Complicating things further, Porter's been sidelined by a back injury that flared up during a pre-camp conditioning test, and he's barely practiced this offseason. That combination — an unresolved money situation and a body that isn't fully right — is exactly the kind of thing that gets trade rumors swirling in NFL circles.
That's what makes SleeperNFL's post worth sitting with. Citing bepryor, it states the Steelers haven't made any trade calls on Porter and haven't fielded any either. In other words, this is still a contract standoff, not the opening act of a trade saga, whatever the internet wants to believe.
Still, an impasse plus a PUP designation plus uncertainty about Week 1 against Atlanta is not a great look for a team that just handed out extensions to four other members of its 2023 draft class this summer. Porter was supposed to be next in line. Now it's a question of whether Pittsburgh pays up before the opener, lets this drag into the season, or watches the noise around a trade get louder no matter what the front office says today.