A top rookie CB, Steelers’ Joey Porter Jr. unwilling to alter play that tends to draw flags

They vary in their methodology or calculation, but no shortage of metrics tend to agree that Joey Porter Jr. is having a standout season as a rookie NFL cornerback.

The top pick of the second round in April by the Pittsburgh Steelers, Porter ranks second in reception percentage (45.5%) and eighth in opponent passer rating when targeted (64.9) among the 76 league cornerbacks who have played at least 500 snaps this season (per Pro Football Focus).

Porter is fifth in coverage success rate (65.2%), via NFL Next Gen Stats.

But there is one other category among cornerbacks for which Porter also ranks near the top of the list.

Penalties.

The way Porter sees it, he’s not going to sacrifice his stature in overall effectiveness in an effort to limit the number of times he gets flagged.

“I am not going to let that alter my game,” Porter said of team-high 11 flags he has drawn this season. “I know what I got going on, and I feel like I am doing a good job. Once you start second-guessing your ability, you start playing bad. And I am not going to let that happen.

“So if I get a flag, it’s like, ‘Whatever, next play,’ and I am going to keep on working.”

Fourteen games and eight starts into his career, Porter certainly has passed the eye test as a shutdown cornerback. Porter began the season as a subpackage defender but quickly earned coaches’ trust and has become a virtually irreplaceable part of the Steelers secondary, a player who never leaves the field in any situation and who is routinely assigned to follow an opponent’s top receiver.

“He’s a good player,” defensive coordinator Teryl Austin said of Porter, before adding the penalty caveat.

“If we can get those things out of his game and work at him and educate him, he’ll be all right. And I think he will get those out of his game.”

Only three players across the league — regardless of position — have been flagged more often than Porter. Of that group, only the Kansas City Chiefs’ L’Jarius Sneed is a cornerback. (All penalty data courtesy nflpenalties.com).

The bevy of penalties is consistent with what the consensus on Porter was in the scouting community in the lead-up to the draft.

Porter, though, doesn’t want to hear it.

“I feel like (officials) find their guys and then they … you’re kinda targeted,” he said. “But I feel like I am not doing anything different than any other DB in the league right now.”

At 6-foot-2½, 193 pounds, Porter is certainly bigger than the average cornerback. And there’s no debating he’s at his best in a press style that takes advantage of his physicality.

Again, though, Porter bristles at that reputation.

“I mean, I want to be known as an all-around corner,” he said, “but if they call me with this ‘physical’ (label) and everything like that, I really don’t (respond). I play football at the end of the day. I don’t really care what they say. I just try to get my job done and do it at a high level.”

Porter is willing to accept the occasional penalty if he maintains lockdown-worthy overall coverage. The rationale is sound: if Porter alters his game to avoid, for example, a flag per game but if in an effort to avoid contact instead gives up two long pass plays, the Steelers are worse off.

Still, it would serve Porter well to find a way to limit the flags. He has accounted for 14.1% of the Steelers’ penalties this season, the third-highest rate of any NFL player’s share of his team’s flags.

Only four league defensive backs have been flagged more often this season for defensive pass interference (four). Only three have had more yellow laundry tossed toward them than the seven times Porter has been cited for the DB “handsy” quartet of DPI, illegal use of hands, illegal contact or defensive holding.

“We’ve got to continue to work with him and educate him on what’s acceptable in this game or what’s not acceptable in this game that was acceptable in the college game,” Austin said. “That’s always the learning with a lot of defensive backs. When you watch a college game, it’s officiated differently. Things that he may not have got called for in college, he’s going to get flagged here. So, we continue to work through that, educate it and practice it. Eventually, it has to come around.”

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