The next time I see Joey Porter Sr., I’m going to ask him what moment he enjoyed more …
The one after Super Bowl XL after the 2005 season when, with the confetti falling on him, he celebrated the Steelers’ win against the Seattle Seahawks with his son, Joey Jr., then 5, in his arms?
Or the one Saturday night when Joey Jr., now 23 and a full-grown man, tossed him the football in the Acrisure Stadium stands after his first professional interception?
I’m guessing Porter Sr. will pick the one Saturday night.
It’s a dad thing.
There’s nothing like the pride a father feels when his child excels in life. That must be especially true for Porter Sr. because his son has followed his career path. The kid is on the verge of being a starter for the same team on which his father was a star for so many years.
Yeah, it’s safe to say ol’ Peezy is proud.
Porter Jr. did a nice job representing the family in the Steelers’ 27-15 win against the Buffalo Bills. He played 24 snaps at cornerback, a limited number because Mike Tomlin didn’t want to push him too hard after he missed a significant bit of training camp because of a hamstring injury. Porter didn’t dress for the exhibition opener in Tampa on Aug. 11.
Porter didn’t look out of place in those 24 snaps.
“I thought he did solid, just looking at him from the naked eye,” said veteran corner/future Hall of Famer Patrick Peterson, who has been serving as a mentor to Porter this summer. “I thought he was where he was supposed to be throughout the game. It’s always good to have young guys get a taste of success early.”
Porter certainly was in the right spot for his interception. Bills backup quarterback Matt Barkley tried for wide receiver Khalil Shakir on the sideline in front of the Steelers’ bench, but his pass hung forever in the air. Porter probably won’t get an easier interception for a long time.
The celebration was on, orchestrated, as it turned out, by another Steelers rookie in linebacker Nick Herbig.
“That’s my dog!” Herbig said of Porter afterward. “It’s crazy. Literally, right before the play, he was like, ‘Get me a sack!’ I’m like, ‘Get me a pick!’ We both pointed to the [end zone] and were like, ‘OK, the first one to do it, we’re running down there!’
“I was happy to see my dog get his first pick and just celebrate like that. Special moment.”
You think the young pup was happy?
The old dog was more thrilled.
“I was looking for him the whole time,” Porter said of his dad. “I couldn’t find him. He was all the way up there in the nose bleeds. He finally came down and I got the ball back and gave it to him.”
It was another memorable father-son moment for the Porters. You might remember the previous one. It happened on the first night of the NFL draft when Porter Jr. was inconsolable about not being picked in the first round. The Steelers were able to get him the next night with the first pick of the second round.
“They wanted to see a [ticked]-off player? Now they got one,” father told son of the draft snub. “Now you’ve been motivated to another level because we got something to prove. Take it personal.”
That’s just one piece of advice Porter has received. Peterson worked extensively with him at camp. So did former Steelers cornerback Ike Taylor, who was in Latrobe. Tomlin also has taken special interest in the kid for obvious reasons.
“It fit a very special need,” Tomlin said of drafting Porter. “We needed to infuse some young, long, corner talent into our defense. It checked the boxes, man.”
The Steelers will have a better defense if Porter proves he is starter-worthy. That will free up Peterson to play more inside, which might be best for him at this late stage of his career.
Beyond that, the Steelers don’t have a lot of depth at cornerback after Peterson and Levi Wallace because of Corey Trice Jr.’s knee injury early in camp. Chandon Sullivan and Elijah Riley did make big plays against the Bills. Each had an interception, Sullivan’s coming when he batted Barkley’s pass in the air at the line of scrimmage and caught the ball before it hit the ground. Riley also had a nice tackle on kickoff coverage.
Tomlin knows Porter’s potential value to the club and will give him plenty of playing time in the final exhibition game at Atlanta on Thursday night.
“We can’t get him enough snaps,” Tomlin said. “We’ll be working our tails off to make up for last week’s missed opportunity. So I like some of the things that he did, but, boy, we’ve got to see a lot more. He has to see a lot more. There’s no substitute for snap exposure.”
Porter described his first real exposure to professional football as “perfect.”
“I was really comfortable,” he said. “That was the main thing I was shocked about. I wasn’t overthinking and I wasn’t nervous. I go against elite guys every day, I practice against GP and DJ” — that would be George Pickens and Diontae Johnson — “so it wasn’t really a shock for me when I was out on that field. It felt like practice.”
The difference was this performance happened in a stadium in front of 64,046 spectators.
Including one proud, beaming dad.
