McCorkle: My Take On The Joey Porter Jr. Saga

Is nothing sacred anymore?

Joey Porter Jr. is the son of a most recent Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Honor inductee, and now he reportedly no longer wants to don the Black and Gold. If the reports are to be believed, the great divide between Porter and the Steelers comes down to the contract guarantee structure—something Pittsburgh players have dealt with for years and years.

So what makes Joey Porter Jr. so special?

Yes, perhaps the Steelers opened this can of worms when they broke precedent for T.J. Watt. But Watt was a former Defensive Player of the Year and arguably one of the five best players in the entire NFL, regardless of position. Porter’s resume can’t hold a candle to Watt’s. Not yet, anyway.

Guaranteed money is all that matters, technically speaking. But how often do the Steelers bail on sizable contracts before they expire? Patrick Queen hasn’t exactly set the world on fire during his time in Pittsburgh, yet the Steelers honored the full three-year commitment they made to him despite opportunities to move on.

That’s generally how the Steelers have operated. Once they make a significant financial commitment to a young player, they don’t typically run for the exits at the first sign of trouble. If anything, they often restructure big deals to free up cap space, accelerating cash flow for players in the process.

The latest twist in the saga is a slap in the face to the organization. Mike McCarthy took a diplomatic approach to Porter’s absence throughout training camp, and even into Week 1 of the regular season. It sure seems like the organization allowed him to operate under the guise of an injury to avoid the PR nightmare of a holdout. Now Porter appears to be using that against the Steelers.

When they began to ramp up pressure by flipping his injury designation from “back” to “non-injury related/conditioning,” Porter curiously exited practice and was subsequently listed, once again, with a back injury. The Steelers can’t exactly hold him in violation of his contract and dock game checks if there is an injury at play, regardless of how real it may or may not be.

It’s the last bit of leverage Porter can exercise over the Steelers. It doesn’t do much for him on its own since the team doesn’t negotiate contracts in-season. But paired with a trade request—which several reports indicate he has made—it backs the Steelers into a corner where they must make a decision.

If you want to know where Porter may have gotten this idea, look no further than fellow Steelers DB Jalen Ramsey—or at least his agent David Mulugheta. Ramsey went through a strikingly similar situation with the Jacksonville Jaguars back in 2019. He sat out weeks 4 through 6 with a back injury after requesting a trade.

Only Ramsey and his agent will ever know if that back injury was real, but he was magically better and played for the Los Angeles Rams the first week after he was traded on Oct. 15. It’s fair to be skeptical from the outside looking in. Especially when Mulugheta has a pattern of using this same playbook.

Micah Parsons, also represented by Mulugheta, had a similar story. He participated the first day of Dallas Cowboys training camp before sitting out with a back injury. He made an official trade request on Aug. 1, and he was traded to the Green Bay Packers on Aug. 28. His saga didn’t drag into the season, and reports say the back injury was real, but he participated in practice a few days after the trade and played in Week 1 just several days later.

What does any of this have anything to do with Porter, who is represented by Andre Odom?

Well, Odom didn’t exactly learn the business in a vacuum. David Mulugheta hired and mentored him at Athletes First in 2020, not long after Ramsey used a remarkably similar strategy to force his way out of Jacksonville.

That doesn’t mean Mulugheta is secretly pulling the strings here. It doesn’t mean Odom is simply following his former mentor’s playbook to a T. And it certainly doesn’t prove Porter’s back injury isn’t legitimate.

But when you have a player represented by an agent who was hired and mentored by the same agent who represented Ramsey and Parsons through eerily similar situations, it’s fair to connect the dots.

Maybe my tin-foil hat is on a little too tight.

Or maybe there is something worth examining here.

And here’s the kicker: Ramsey and Parsons had the resume to play this game. Ramsey was arguably the best cornerback in football when he forced his way out of Jacksonville. The same with Parsons, albeit at outside linebacker, in Dallas. They had the kind of cachet that allows a player to push an organization to its breaking point. Porter doesn’t. He’s a good young cornerback who is entering the prime of his career, but he isn’t Ramsey in 2019 or Parsons in 2025. He hasn’t earned the right to hold a franchise hostage like one of the league’s very best players.

If that’s the game Porter wants to play, fine. But where is the loyalty?

The Steelers drafted him in the second round, developed him into a starting cornerback, stood by him through the inevitable growing pains, and then spent the better part of this offseason helping manage his public image while they negotiated a deal.

This is the same organization that gave his father a home, turned him into a franchise icon, and inducted him into their Hall of Honor. Porter is under no obligation to take a hometown discount, but there’s a pretty significant difference between demanding to be paid and seemingly employing dirty tricks to force your way out.

For a player who was handed the rare opportunity to carry one of the most beloved names in Steelers history into the next generation, that’s an awful lot of tradition to throw away over the structure of a lucrative contract.

At this point, the Steelers should just trade him. As Mike Tomlin would say, we want volunteers, not hostages.