As the contract impasse lingers between the Steelers and cornerback Joey Porter Jr., none of the other 31 teams has made a move to try to get him.<\/p>\n
A lengthy article from ESPN exploring the dynamics of the situation contains this key line: “[T]he team has neither made nor received<\/a> any serious inquiries about the cornerback.\u201d<\/p>\n Given that it\u2019s been obvious for weeks that Porter and the Steelers aren\u2019t seeing eye-to-eye on a potential extension, interested teams have had every reason to spark a dialogue. The absence of any such effort suggests that no one is willing to pay Porter what he wants and to give the Steelers what they\u2019d need.<\/p>\n ESPN also points to two primary issues with the negotiations. One, the two sides have a \u201csignificant difference\u201d about Porter\u2019s value. Two, Porter wants the team to break from its habit of fully guaranteeing compensation beyond the first year of the contract.<\/p>\n The Steelers historically had done that only for high-end quarterbacks, like Ben Roethlisberger. As noted by ESPN, they broke from that precedent with linebacker T.J. Watt, twice.<\/p>\n As not noted by ESPN, they also deviated from this habit when trading for, and signing, receiver DK Metcalf in 2025; he got $60 million fully guaranteed over the first two years.<\/p>\n While cash-flow concerns possibly will keep the Steelers from expanding the practice to a player who won\u2019t be paid at the top of the market, the bigger issue seems to be the value of the contract.<\/p>\n Either way, the team\u2019s other internal rule regarding not doing new deals after the season begins has put everyone in an awkward spot. As noted by Steelers Depot, the team made an exception in 1995 for safety Darren Perry. At the time, the explanation from Ed Bouchette of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was that \u201cif they were close to a deal that would carry it over<\/a> to the early part of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n In this case, they could try something like \u201cwe\u2019ll do a deal before the first game of the season in which the player plays.\u201d<\/p>\n Semantics don\u2019t matter, since no deal is close. And it\u2019s possible Porter will continue to not play until the Steelers trade him for whatever they can get.<\/p>\n As an unnamed \u201csource with knowledge of the situation\u201d told ESPN, \u201cI don\u2019t know if he ever puts on a Steelers uniform again.\u201d<\/p>\n For now, he won\u2019t put on a uniform for the second game of the 2026 season. With no end to the standoff in sight, it could continue on a weekly basis until he\u2019s traded or the Steelers decide to play hardball by fining him for refusing to play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the contract impasse lingers between the Steelers and cornerback Joey Porter Jr., none of the other 31…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-853407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}