The Joey Porter Jr. standoff is over, and the Pittsburgh Steelers didn’t get much for their trouble. Pittsburgh is trading the fourth-year cornerback to the Dallas Cowboys for a 2028 second-round pick and a 2027 sixth-rounder, according to NFL Network’s Jane Slater and Netflix’s Tom Pelissero.
From the Steelers’ side, we’d grade this one a C+. The return is fair given where things stood, but it’s well short of what Pittsburgh was reportedly hoping for when teams first started calling. Last month, Pro Football Talk reported the Steelers wanted a first-round pick, or a second- and third-rounder, for Porter.
Why the Steelers settled for less
Pittsburgh’s leverage disappeared one practice report at a time. Porter is in the final year of his rookie deal and wanted to be paid like the top of the market, with recent deals for Christian Gonzalez and Devon Witherspoon setting the bar at more than $130 million. General manager Omar Khan said in August there would be “no negotiations during the season,” and Porter didn’t play a snap in the first three games because of a back injury and conditioning. When the back showed up on the injury report again this week, any hope of a bidding war was gone.
There’s a real case for moving on, though. Porter would have walked in free agency in March, and the best Pittsburgh could have hoped for then was a compensatory pick, which tops out at the end of the third round. A second-rounder beats that, and the Steelers avoid a nine-figure commitment to a player with three career interceptions in 41 starts.
What keeps the grade from climbing is the timing. A 2028 pick is two drafts away, and Pittsburgh is 2-1 with Jalen Ramsey playing through a broken wrist. The Steelers’ cornerback group now leans on Ramsey, Jamel Dean, Asante Samuel Jr., Brandin Echols and rookie Daylen Everette, per CBS Sports. That’s a lot of uncertainty for a team trying to win now.
The Steelers visit the Cleveland Browns at 8:15 p.m. ET Thursday on Prime Video. How that secondary holds up over the next month will decide whether this grade ages well.
