Cornerback Joey Porter Jr. didn’t play in Sunday’s season-opening win over the Falcons, and coach Mike McCarthy was noncommittal on Porter’s timeline for a return.
Porter, who did not get his desired contract extension with the team before the start of the season, missed all of training camp with a back injury. He was limited in practice last week, and McCarthy said Porter was in a “ramp-up” period.
McCarthy was asked Monday whether the plan was to increase Porter’s workload this week.
“Hopefully we’ll have a good plan for him on Wednesday, and hopefully we’ll do more,” McCarthy said, via Brooke Pryor of ESPN. “That’s the outlook. So yeah, hopefully we move forward with more volume of work. That would be my anticipation.”
McCarthy did add that he expects Porter to play once the ramp-up is completed.
Porter has not publicly committed to playing.
He is due to make $3.924 million in 2026 and wants a deal commensurate with those of Devon Witherspoon and Christian Gonzalez. The Steelers stop negotiations once the season starts, so a trade is a possibility with Porter in the final year of his deal.
Pryor reports the Steelers have neither made nor received calls for the 2023 second-round pick.
“My concern for Joey, obviously, is to get him to a spot no different than everybody else in training camp,” McCarthy said. “The first players that go through that first ramp-up period that are not ready to go — they don’t participate fully in a padded practice. So I don’t really see this any different than that. Now it is different that there’s a business component to it, and that’s really a whole other topic.
“As far as Joey’s participation in practice, he’s communicating with the trainer every day. He’s communicating with the strength and conditioning coach. . . . We’ll get him out there when he’s ready to go through a full practice.”
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