This Keeps Getting Crazier... | Pittsburgh Steelers News

Things just keep getting crazier as the Joey Porter Jr. saga rages on here in Pittsburgh after their week one victory against the Atlanta Falcons. Head coach Mike McCarthy came out today speaking of his outlook of possibly seeing Joey Porter Jr. return to practice this week. This is crazy news, not news that I was expecting. Complete 180, honestly, especially after what all of us Steelers fans kind of were seeing on Twitter and everything before the game yesterday on Sunday of the Steelers looking to shop him, other teams not really wanting to give up what the Steelers wanted for him. This tweet from Nick Faribault where he asked Mike McCarthy on the situation. Mike McCarthy says he hasn't met with the trainers yet, but the hope and outlook for Joey Porter Jr. is for him to take on more volume in practice. He also went on to it was his decision alone to sit Porter out. Again, complete 180 from what we were experiencing literally 24 hours ago with this whole Joey Porter Jr. stuff. This morning when I woke up, I was like, I'm expecting news maybe on a possible trade as early as today. That's how I was feeling after the game. I don't know about you guys, but I was almost expecting something to really happen and Mike McCarthy comes out and kind of flips the script on it. I'll leave that up to you guys if you guys take what he's saying here at face value or is this just coach talk? I kind of lean towards coach talk, but it's interesting to see that they're going to try to involve him more into practice after this back injury that Joey Porter Jr. is reported to have. He also went on to say the plan for Porter this week is that they have a good plan for him on Wednesday. Hopefully he will do more, but that is Mike McCarthy's expectation. So we'll have to see on Wednesday if Joey Porter Jr. does suit up for practice. If we do see him and again, I don't know what to really take about. I'm curious what you guys think about this because I am leaning towards the fence of maybe we don't see him, but it seems like Mike McCarthy expects him to. So we'll have to reconvene with that on Wednesday, but I think Joey Porter Jr. probably saw a lot of changes to what we saw defensively on Sunday. This was from Brooke Pryor. She asked also Mike McCarthy if Porter's availability impacted the mix of man versus zone. McCarthy didn't answer this. He said it was a great question, but he wasn't going to answer it. The reason why we bring this up is according to NextGenStats, the Steelers didn't play a single snap in man coverage versus the Falcons on Sunday. 100% zone. Last season, the new Steelers defensive coordinator Patrick Graham played nearly 91% zone versus Drake May, and then Seattle played 88% zone when they just played Drake May a few days ago. So obviously Patrick Graham loves himself some zone, but this is I think news to me because this is a crazy difference from the defense last year. The Steelers defense last year ran 31.1% of man coverage, which was fourth most in the entire NFL, only behind the Browns, the Broncos, and the Lions. In terms of new defensive coordinator Patrick Graham bringing a change, that wasn't a surprise, but especially with how important Joey Porter Jr. is when it comes to running man coverage. When you think height, weight, speed, what he brings to you athletically, you have to think that no Joey Porter Jr. probably resulted in a 100% clip running zone defense, which is not something that you ever see. As zone heavy of a defense as you can think of, they don't run zone 100% of the time. So it's really easy to think that no Joey Porter Jr. equals we're not going to run man. Maybe so. Again, that's speculation. You guys can come to your own conclusions with that. That's just how I read it, but I want to lead this up to you guys. Do you guys think we will see Joey Porter Jr. next game? Yes or no. I want to hear you guys' thought in the comments, because like I mentioned before a few minutes ago, I almost was expecting this morning to wake up and see him somewhere else that was not Pittsburgh. And now McCarthy expects him to play on Wednesday. So we're kind of on two separate ends here when it comes to the reporting that we've seen in the past, like 48 hours. So do you think he'll play week two? Do you think we'll see him at all? Here's what you guys' thoughts there are in the comments. And before we move on to our next point, I want to talk about our sponsor for today. And that is Cal sheet on Cal sheet. You're trading directly against other users, not against the house, like other traditional sports book, sports books, you're buying yes or no contracts and the outcome of sports politics, the weather, and you can also trade on the Steelers Patriots game that we keep mentioning currently New England, 67% chance to win that game on Cal sheet. And if you want to place $25 on the Steelers to upset, according to Cal sheet, upset the New England Patriots, you can win $72. If you're interested in trying out calcium, you can use the link in our description and the pin comment, and you can trade $25 using code digest NFL, and you'll get $25 added to your account instantly. All right. I also wanted to mention this. Um, obviously, uh, yesterday when I came on, it was a lot of, and really anyone that's was, has been talking about the Steelers, uh, let's talk about their defense rightfully. So TJ watt, amazing game, Alex Heisman, awesome game, Kim Hayward, Dracon brisker, pretty much the entire defense played an awesome game. The list goes on and on. And a lot of people were looking at that offense being like, wow, that's not what I was expecting out of a Mike McCarthy offense. I know it's early in week one, but you know, you were expecting more, but the more you kind of look into it. And I actually rewatched the game and kind of watching to see what they were trying to do. There was, yes, it wasn't a stark difference, but I did see a little bit of difference between the offense we saw last year and what Mike McCarthy was trying to do week one. This is again from Nick Faribault. Mike McCarthy says the Steelers are going to put more energy into third down offense this week. Our third down offense, frankly held us back. Mike McCarthy added, and this is what I really want to stress here, that they've hit their shot plays and practice consistently. And he thought they were there, but there were details that forced them to miss those. There were details to force them to miss those as interesting way, interesting way to put it. But I don't know if you guys saw this passing chart from Aaron Rogers. He was kind of throwing the ball all over the field in different, you know, in different ways. Obviously you still have the, you know, behind the line of scrimmage throws, you still have kind of the short passes, but you look at those white bubbles, you know, uh, at the top of the screen shot plays were happening, which compared to last year, obviously, you know, the Steelers took their fair share of shot plays, but what we got five behind the 20 yard mark and a couple more sprinkled around the 20 yard mark. And you completed a few of those. The only touchdown that Rogers through was for 16 yards. So the ball was being thrown down the field and they kept talking about this constantly on the broadcast about how Aaron Rogers depth of target last year was historically low, especially for Aaron Rogers mark, but coming around and turn, you know, turning around to this game where it seemed like, you know, the Steelers were trying to push the ball down more. Didn't really work. Honestly, no, uh, DK Metcalf drops and overall just the, you know, the offense not having much synergy, leave that up to week one, leave that up to whatever you want. But I think those are signs the Steelers fans can have a little bit of hope with this offense. I, you know, I do want to stress everyone, even myself, because I was watching the game and I was, I was, I was frankly frustrated right with that offense. I'm sure a lot of us were, but I, you know, I want to see week two, week three. I mentioned this on the episode yesterday. Um, if we get into October, November, and it looks the same, then I think we can really start, you know, raising some alarms, but things like this passing chart make me feel a little bit better. I don't know about you guys, but just to see that, you know, we are attempting to throw the ball downfield, not saying we didn't last year, but I think we saw, you know, some seeds being planted on what a, you know, a 2026 Steelers offense could look like and how it could possibly improve from that iteration we saw last year. But all right, that's going to do everything that we have here. If anything happens with this situation, either he shows up to practice, he doesn't practice or the sad, you know, realization that there's a possibility he could get moved. You can get that right here on Steelers Digest. We'll keep you up to date with all that new information, but hopefully you guys have a great rest of your day and we'll see you guys very, very soon.