The Steelers woke up Wednesday morning with Joey Porter Jr. in their game plan.
By bedtime, the fourth-year star was a Cowboy.
What happened in the short time in between reflected a deal that effectively went from dead to done in a matter of hours.
Dallas hasn’t been shy about its desire to add to its rebuilt defense over the past year. Or, more recently, its need to add a top-end corner specifically. Pittsburgh knew it, but until midday Wednesday, the idea of moving a player of Porter’s caliber was a nonstarter—they had too much invested into this year to do it, regardless of how testy things had gotten.
Things changed at the Steelers’ day-before-the-game walkthrough on Wednesday.
What forced the trade
The existing divide was written into the team’s injury report for two weeks. After listing Porter with a back injury in Week 1, the team amended it in Week 2 and again in Week 3, adding “not-injury-related” and “conditioning” to the back ailment. This publicly suggested that they didn’t think the back injury was really keeping him out. He was questionable for Weeks 1 and 3, and ruled out for Week 2. He missed all three games.
This was the week they’d agreed to bring him back, with the team set to play on Thursday against the Browns. He was listed as an estimated full-go for practices on Monday and Tuesday (estimated because the team had walkthroughs both days), lined up with the first defense in walkthrough, and the coaches went into midweek expecting him to start in Cleveland.
Instead, Porter showed up for what was very light work on Wednesday, told the coaches his back was acting up, and pulled himself from practice, delivering the team a surprising blow a little over 24 hours before the game. At that point, the trust between the team and Porter, already strained, was severed. So the Steelers aggressively shopped him, aiming to get him off the roster before kickoff.
Circling back with the teams that had previously inquired, the Steelers found a willing partner in Dallas. Now, a little more background on the transaction:
• Again, Dallas’s efforts to add to its defense over the past year have been considerable. The Cowboys were very much in on Maxx Crosby until the Raiders initially agreed to a deal with the Ravens.. They also first reached out to the Steelers on Porter early on in training camp, while making calls on corners with simmering contract situations (New England’s Christian Gonzalez was another). Pittsburgh told Dallas that if a deal happened early in the season, the price would be high. It was too high, at the time, for the Cowboys for a player who had an expiring contract.
• Still, the Cowboys and Steelers kept talking. And adding to the George Pickens trade they pulled off last year, the teams did a deal that sent tackle Broderick Thomas and a fourth-round pick to Dallas for third- and sixth-round picks.
• With injuries striking, and Cobie Durant down for Week 3, the Cowboys had to play six different corners on defense against the Ravens in Brazil—ultimately losing on a play where Zay Flowers beat journeyman Reddy Steward to set up the game-winning field goal with one second left. And all of that is even with rookie safety Caleb Downs eating up snaps at nickel.
• Conversely, the Steelers have had Jamel Dean, Asante Samuel Jr. and Jalen Ramsey manning the position, with veteran Brandin Echols and third-round pick Daylen Everette giving them quality depth at the position, and growing confidence they could be O.K. with Porter.
• As tension heightened, the uniqueness of the long-standing relationship Porter’s family has with the team was a factor. The Steelers remain close with Porter’s dad, a team Hall of Honor inductee, and his mom, and watched Porter grow up in the area. So as negotiations deteriorated, this wasn’t “just business” like you’d have with other players, making it tougher to get talks back on track.
• The divide between the sides wasn’t massive. Porter wasn’t asking for what Gonzalez or Seattle’s Devon Witherspoon got, but wanted to be close to that, and clear $30 million per year like star corners Derek Stingley Jr. of Houston, Sauce Gardner of Indianapolis and Trent McDuffie of the Rams. The Steelers were willing to go into the high 20s on a new-money APY basis with Porter, but not past that, before the Week 1 deadline that the team imposes annually for extensions with players.
• At mid-afternoon on Wednesday, after the team’s practice wrapped up, Steelers GM Omar Khan called Cowboys VP of player personnel Will McClay to reengage Dallas on a deal. By then, McClay and his staff had done their homework on Porter. They’d met with him before the draft in 2023, had his file from then, and met with Thomas and Pickens to get more information on who Porter was as a person. It also didn’t hurt that COO Stephen Jones served for years on the competition committee with former Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, a big fan of Porter’s.
• On the field, the Cowboys saw a long, patient, smart, scheme-versatile corner who was comfortable playing either side of the field, and in man or zone, making him a good fit for new coordinator Christian Parker’s scheme. Parker, for his part, was vocal in support of the deal. The idea is that Porter should slot in easily as the boundary corner opposite Daron Bland.
• The two sides talked into the night, and Dallas’s willingness to do a trade without having a contract extension in place helped finalize the trade. The Cowboys viewed giving up a second-round pick two drafts from now as giving up third-round value, and put a play-time condition on the sixth-rounder to protect themselves in the short term. Meanwhile, the Steelers added to a war chest they’ll need to turn over an older roster, having had 10 draft picks in 2026, with nine on the board now in both 2027 and 2028.
• Dallas did connect with Porter’s agents, David Mulugheta and Andre Odom, and came to the agreement that a new contract would be tabled until after the season, similar to how Dallas handled the trade for Pickens, who also has Mulugheta as part of his team. (It’s worth noting, of course, that the high-powered Mulugheta is also Micah Parsons’s agent.) Also, if Porter were to walk after this season, the Cowboys would get a comp pick in 2028, likely a third- or fourth-rounder, which would help offset the loss of the second-rounder.
• Finally, if this seems to you like a philosophical shift for Dallas, you’re on to something. The Cowboys have added four veteran starters—Quinnen Williams, Kenny Clark, Rashan Gary and Porter—to the defense over the past 14 months. Add Pickens, and that’s five players. Why? Because the Joneses see a window of opportunity with Dak Prescott in his prime, especially given how the offense played last year. Prescott’s been vocal about this being a Super Bowl–or–bust year. The team’s actions align with that.
So Dallas goes forward in a win-now posture.
And the Steelers are in one, too, which is why this wasn’t an easy trade for them to make.
Making it even harder was the Steelers’ relationship with the family, and that they still regarded Porter as a top-notch player and aperson, and expected those bonds to remain in the long-term, even if that’s complicated for now.
In the end, though, they did what they needed to do, and did it fast. Wednesday showed where all this was headed. It also made clear where the path out was, even if it was one they really didn’t want to take for months.
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ALBERT BREER
Albert Breer is a senior writer covering the NFL for Sports Illustrated, delivering the biggest stories and breaking news from across the league. He has been on the NFL beat since 2005 and joined SI in 2016. Breer began his career covering the New England Patriots for the MetroWest Daily News and the Boston Herald from 2005 to ’07, then covered the Dallas Cowboys for the Dallas Morning News from 2007 to ’08. He worked for The Sporting News from 2008 to ’09 before returning to Massachusetts as The Boston Globe’s national NFL writer in 2009. From 2010 to 2016, Breer served as a national reporter for NFL Network. In addition to his work at Sports Illustrated, Breer regularly appears on NBC Sports Boston, 98.5 The Sports Hub in Boston, FS1 with Colin Cowherd, The Rich Eisen Show and The Dan Patrick Show. A 2002 graduate of Ohio State, Breer lives near Boston with his wife, a cardiac ICU nurse at Boston Children’s Hospital, and their three children.
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