Joey
Porter Jr..
Joey
Porter Jr..
Penn State· 6'3"· 193 lb· 4.46s 40
"Offenses stopped throwing at him in college and he still never learned to take the ball away, which is the whole story of a very good corner who was almost a great one."Pre-draft read
Porter played boundary corner at Penn State and lived in press, jamming at the line and then riding the route stem with 34-inch arms that reset a receiver's timing before the release was finished. His mechanics were built on length and patience rather than twitch: he opened late, stayed square as long as he could, and used the arms as the recovery tool when the stem beat his feet.
The secondary trait was contested-catch defense — he played the receiver's hands better than the ball, which produced 11 breakups as a senior on very few targets. In run support he was willing and tackled with leverage. The signature was that quarterbacks simply stopped throwing his way, and the tape became an exercise in reading absence rather than volume.
Press-man defense that lets him travel with the opponent's boundary X and play with a safety over the top on true isolation downs.
Year 1: outside starter matched on bigger perimeter receivers. Ceiling: shadow CB1 who erases a side of the field without needing help.
A heavy off-zone match scheme that asks him to plant and drive on slot option routes — take away the jam and his feet have to do work his arms usually cover.
He needs a coordinator comfortable playing man on early downs, because his value is contact at the line, not pattern reading from depth.
Career Highlights: Penn State DB Joey Porter Jr. | 2023 NFL Draft
Conference-produced career reel showing the press jam and catch-point work that defined his boundary tape.
Joey Porter Jr. 2022 Highlights | Penn State DB
Senior season cut-ups including the six-breakup performance at Purdue.
Joey Porter Jr. (Penn State CB #9) Vs. Auburn 2021
Single-game all-22 style reel from his first year as a full-time starter.
A three-year contributor and two-year starter at Penn State, Porter was the rare college corner whose evaluation problem was scarcity: he was long, physical and confident enough that offenses schemed away from him, so the film offered fewer answers than a scout wanted. What was there was consistent — a press corner with real size who mirrored on the boundary and finished at the catch point.
The production reflected the avoidance. He broke up 19 passes over his final two seasons while intercepting only one ball, including a six-breakup night at Purdue in 2022 that set a school record, and he earned first-team All-Big Ten and a Jim Thorpe Award watch-list nod as a senior. The flag was ball production: hands that arrived to disrupt but rarely to take the ball away, plus a grabby streak that projected to draw flags against NFL officiating.
Boards had him as a top-two corner in the class behind Devon Witherspoon, and his slide out of the first round was never fully explained by any single knock. Pittsburgh, holding the top of the second at 32, turned down multiple trade-down offers to take the son of a four-time Pro Bowl Steeler — a legacy pick that also happened to be the cleanest value on the board.
- 01
Length
34-inch arms and an 80⅞-inch wingspan sit in the 97th percentile or better for the position, and it shows up as a functional recovery tool, not a measurement.
- 02
Press technique
Jams with timing at the line and stays patient through the release rather than lunging, which lets him control the stem before the route ever develops.
- 03
Catch-point play
Finds the receiver's hands and plays through them; 11 breakups as a senior on a small target volume is the whole argument in one number.
- 04
Size profile
At 6-foot-2½ with 10-inch hands, he matches the boundary X receivers most corners in this class physically could not handle.
- 05
Avoidance factor
Quarterbacks stopped throwing his direction as a senior, the truest compliment a college corner can receive from opposing coordinators.
- 01
Ball skills
One career interception; the hands break up throws but almost never finish them, which caps the splash value teams pay for at corner.
- 02
Grabby hands
Rides receivers through the route and lets contact linger downfield, a habit that translated directly into NFL flags early in his career.
- 03
Change of direction
A 35-inch vertical and average short-area quickness mean he recovers with arms rather than feet against sudden separators in the slot.
- 04
Sample size
Two years of starting tape against limited targets left evaluators projecting rather than confirming how he handles heavy volume.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.46sp50
- Vertical
- 35inp50
- Broad jump
- 129inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- 17repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Penn State | 8 | 33 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 0 |
| 2021 | Penn State | 13 | 51 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 1 |
| 2022 | Penn State | 10 | 27 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 0 |
| Career | — | 31 | 111 | 1 | 1 | 19 | 1 |
Season lines verified against cfbstats.com Penn State 2020-2022 (player 1105145); games, tackles, passes broken up and forced fumbles sum exactly to the career line. cfbstats has no player page for his 2019 true-freshman season, so that year is omitted rather than estimated. cfbstats omits empty tables instead of printing zeros, so 2021-2022 TFL/sacks and unlisted interception rows are left null rather than zeroed, and fumble recoveries are not tracked for him in any season.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A steady, physical outside starter who wins with technique and disruption more than takeaways — a long-tenured CB1 without the interception totals.
The same length-and-press archetype at its ceiling, where avoidance becomes a shutdown label rather than a projection problem.
A first-round-caliber cover corner whose lack of ball production and penalty habits kept him a rotational body on short contracts.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Porter Jr. started 10 games for the Pittsburgh Steelers in his rookie season, quickly establishing himself as a starting cornerback. He recorded one interception and 10 passes defended.
Pittsburgh eased him in and then never took him out. He opened his rookie year behind Levi Wallace, took the starting job in Week 8 against Jacksonville, and finished 2023 with 43 tackles and an interception across 17 games, shadowing opposing number ones down the stretch and earning PFWA All-Rookie honors — alongside a penalty count that piled up as he learned NFL officiating. Year two he started all 16 games he played, posting 67 tackles, seven breakups and one interception. In 2025 he was the Steelers' clear CB1: 14 games, 51 tackles, a sack, 11 pass breakups that ranked seventh among qualifying corners, and 894 coverage snaps.
The evaluation held up almost exactly as written. The length, the press and the breakups all translated; the ball production never did — three interceptions in three seasons from a corner whose hands are always at the catch point. That is why his 2026 was complicated: he opened training camp on PUP with a back injury while extension talks with Pittsburgh stalled at what Mike McCarthy publicly called an impasse, with no formal offer on the table as of late August. As a second-round pick he has no fifth-year option, so the leverage is real. He is a good, occasionally excellent starting corner — the pick worked — and the argument now is only about what that is worth.
Data note: Season lines verified against cfbstats.com Penn State 2020-2022 (player 1105145); games, tackles, passes broken up and forced fumbles sum exactly to the career line. cfbstats has no player page for his 2019 true-freshman season, so that year is omitted rather than estimated. cfbstats omits empty tables instead of printing zeros, so 2021-2022 TFL/sacks and unlisted interception rows are left null rather than zeroed, and fumble recoveries are not tracked for him in any season.