2023 will be a good year for NFL teams needing cornerback talent in the draft. In Touchdown Wire’s latest mock draft, we had five cornerbacks going in the first round. The placement of those players — Georgia’s Kelee Ringo, Penn State’s Joey Porter Jr., Utah’s Clark Phillips III, South Carolina’s Cam Smith, and Oregon’s Christian Gonzalez — depends on NFL team preferences, but there’s a lot of talent at the position, and players who should be able to help their NFL teams right away.
There are other cornerbacks who will be taken in the later rounds, but as it stands right now, it’s quite possible that of all the prospects at the position in this group, Porter — the son of the former Pittsburgh Steelers, Miami Dolphins, and Arizona Cardinals linebacker, as well as the Steelers’ former defensive assistant and outside linebackers coach — is the best of them all.
Why? Because when it comes to defending modern offenses, your cornerbacks must be aggressive enough to disrupt the timing and route correctness of receivers in quick game, agile enough to defend option routes and multiple concepts outside and in the slot, and versatile enough to play well in any sort of scheme. Porter Jr. checks all the boxes.
This week, the junior made his intentions for the 2023 draft official.
Thank You Penn State 💙 pic.twitter.com/0Yxx8hE7s2
— Joey Porter Jr. (@jjporter_1) November 30, 2022
This after a 2022 season in which, per Pro Football Focus, he allowed 15 catches on 30 targets for 143 yards, 51 yards after the catch, no touchdowns, no interceptions, nine pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 63.6. When we get into his tape, we’ll tell you why Porter’s metrics should be even better than that. At 6-foot-2 and 198 pounds, Porter possesses the combination of size, speed, agility, and coverage awareness in multiple schemes that should see his name called in the first 10 picks of next year’s draft.
Erasing opponents in man coverage.
Porter is an outstanding man defender because he’s been able to develop his route awareness, agility in short spaces, and recovery speed to align with his size and base athleticism. His 2022 tape shows a fully-developed player in this regard, and he’s as capable as any cornerback in this draft class — not to mention most NFL cornerbacks — when it comes to dominating opposing receivers in man coverage.
In Cover-0, Cover-1, and 2-Man this season, per Sports Info Solutions, Porter has allowed just eight catches on 22 targets for 64 yards, an opponent passer rating of 44.9, and an EPA per target allowed of -0.223. This is where he thrives the most as an aggressive alpha cornerback.
And it’s not just on solo boundary stuff — as he showed on this deflection against Northwestern in Week 5, Porter (No. 9, up top) is quite able to break off against a short crosser in Cover-1 and just demolish it. You’d better run that pick concept correctly and get him out of the way if you want the play to succeed.
And if you want your cornerback to smother a receiver in man coverage… well, this rep against Purdue’s Mershawn Rice is teach tape.
Here, in Week 4, Central Michigan is trying to mitigate Penn State’s Cover-1 with a reduced formation to give receivers more room to the boundary. But when receiver Finn Hogan tries to take the release route ball upfield, Porter has him dead to rights from the first step.
This is the primary improvement you see in Porter over previous seasons — he’s so much better in tight spaces, and with routes that require him to diagnose and react on the fly. He’s fully integrated into those concepts.
Developing zone coverage skills.
Porter is no slouch in zone coverage, either — this season, when in Cover-2, Cover-3, Cover-4, and Cover-6, per Pro Football Focus, he’s allowed six catches on nine targets for 73 yards, 34 yards after the catch, and an opponent passer rating of 91.4. There are times when he’s a bit more vulnerable in zone, or he’ll give up short completions that are almost automatic in the scheme, but his 2022 zone defense tape is where the development really shows up.
On this deep deflection against Minnesota in Week 8, Porter took receiver Daniel Jackson all the way up the rail on the right boundary in Cover-3, and there was no way Jackson was moving Porter away from his outside position through the vertical route. Porter has a way of smothering receivers with that aggressive demeanor and developed technique, and this is an excellent example. If you were to change the unform and tell me that this was a Richard Sherman rep from about 2012, I’d be inclined to believe you.
And this deflection against Central Michigan’s Finn Hogan in Week 4 shows something that would have to come to bear were Porter to be considered a top prospect — the ability to charge and recover in off-zone coverage. It’s great to plaster guys all over the field when you have that ability, but NFL teams will challenge you to play off-coverage with route combinations and reduced splits, and you’d better be ready for it.
There were also a couple of times in zone where Porter would blitz, and he was somehow debited for the completion. Not sure how that works, but here’s one example against Ohio State.
What still needs work.
Porter’s NFL coaches will want to work with him on advanced route combinations, because there are times where his aggressiveness will get the better of him in those circumstances, and he’ll be out of position to get to the ball. Opposing offenses also deal with him by throwing screens and picks at him, and that doesn’t always work in Porter’s favor. This screen against Michigan in Week 7 is one example.
The best cornerbacks and cornerback coaches will talk about staying in phase and not chasing plays. Porter is better with this than he used to be, but there are still coaching points to consider.
At the same time, even if Porter is a step off at any point in the route, his recovery speed and closure to the ball combine to make a great adaptative strategy. Ohio State’s Marvin Harrison Jr. got an 11-yard catch on the crosser here, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience — and Harrison had to throw everything he had at Porter at the angle to get the ball in the first place.
Regarding Porter’s zero interceptions this season, I don’t think it’s an indication of terrible ball skills. I think he’s so focused on breaking up the play, that he’ll forget to go after the ball. New York Jets rookie Sauce Gardner had the same issue coming out of Cincinnati last year, and things have gone pretty well for him in the NFL.
Porter can be an alpha dog cornerback in the NFL.
I’ve mentioned Richard Sherman and Sauce Gardner in this piece, because after studying Porter’s tape, I think those are the two most apt NFL comparisons. Porter has that highly appealing combination of physical traits that seem to set a cornerback up for success, and the overall development of the nuances of the position bode well for his professional future.
Porter would be at his natural best with an NFL team that plays a ton of aggressive press coverage and had a secondary in which the roles are clearly defined, but there isn’t a system in which he wouldn’t work well, and when you’re talking about a top cornerback in a draft class, you want to be able to think of him as schematically versatile.
When you have a cornerback who brings that much of everything to the table already, you have a No. 1 cornerback in a draft class. And that’s what Joey Porter Jr. is for 2023.
