Did the Steelers just send Joey Porter Jr. to the one place he still won't get paid? Credit to @byjoeybray

Did the Steelers just send Joey Porter Jr. to the one place he still won't get paid? Credit to @byjoeybray

By Wilson Simons

   On paper, the Cowboys trading for Joey Porter Jr. makes sense. Dallas is 1-2, its secondary has been wrecked by injuries, and Jerry Jones has never met a splash he didn't like. A 26-year-old press corner fixes a real problem.

    Then you look at the contract, and the whole thing gets weird.

    An hour or so after the trade, Jordan Schultz reported that the Cowboys won't be immediately extending Porter. The plan, per Schultz, is to let him play and let the contract take care of itself. Porter came to Dallas because Pittsburgh wouldn't pay him. He's now on a team that also isn't paying him.

    Credit to @byjoeybray for the theory I can't stop thinking about: maybe that was the point.

    The Steelers knew exactly where Dallas stood financially, because they've dealt with this front office three times in two years. They knew the Cowboys already have a big-money receiver who wants a long-term deal and isn't getting one. George Pickens, another former Steeler, is playing this season on a $27.3 million franchise tag after Dallas announced in April it wouldn't negotiate a long-term deal with him. The Cowboys can't extend Pickens until after Week 18 in January, and Stephen Jones has said keeping him long-term is the "ultimate goal."

    Dallas also just handed Quinnen Williams a three-year, $105.9 million extension and has spent the past 13 months trading for Williams, Rashan Gary and Kenny Clark. CeeDee Lamb and Dak Prescott are on big deals through 2028. That's a lot of money already spoken for before you even get to a corner who wants around $30 million a year.

    And here's the detail that makes it look less like a coincidence: there's only one franchise tag per year. If the Cowboys want to keep Pickens without a long-term deal, they may have to tag him again. If they want to stop Porter from walking, they'd need that same tag. They can't use it on both.

    Then there's the agent. Porter is represented by David Mulugheta, who also represents Pickens and represented Micah Parsons, the player Dallas traded to Green Bay last year after a contract standoff. Mulugheta now has two clients in Dallas who both want to get paid, and the Cowboys have history with him that didn't end well.

    So look at it from Pittsburgh's side. Porter sat out three games in what everyone outside the building assumed was a contract protest. He said he never asked for a trade. The Steelers couldn't get anything close to the two first-round picks they floated early on and settled for a 2028 second-rounder and a 2027 sixth. If you can't win the standoff, you can at least pick where he lands, and Dallas is the one destination where he gets the same answer he got in Pittsburgh: play first, get paid later. Maybe.

    Was it a "fuck you" from the Steelers? I can't prove that, and nobody in the building is going to say it. The more boring explanation is that Dallas simply made the best offer, and Khan took it before the Browns game. But the outcome is the same either way. Porter forced his way out of Pittsburgh to get paid and landed somewhere he still has to prove it on a one-year deal or hit free agency in March.


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