The Steelers do not negotiate contract extensions once the season starts. Thus, time is running out for the team to complete a long-term deal with cornerback Joey Porter.
“It’s a business, and there’s definitely business conversations going on,” head coach McCarthy said Monday, via Jack Markowski of SI.com.
McCarthy insinuated that he expects Porter to play regardless how talks turn out before Sunday’s season opener against the Falcons.
“Yeah, I hope so,” McCarthy said. “You know, just keep working him. He’s still, I’d put him in a ramp-up mode.”
When asked what happens if Porter doesn’t play, McCarthy said, “We’ll see what happens.”
Porter practiced for the first time last Tuesday after spending all of training camp on the active/physically unable to perform list. But last week he was noncommittal about playing Week 1 absent a contract extension.
Porter, a second-round pick in 2023, is entering the final year of his rookie contract scheduled to make $3.924 million this year.
He is coming off a career year, totaling a career-high 14 passes defensed to go along with 52 tackles, one sack and one interception.
It’s currently team captain season, with plenty of NFL franchises unveiling plenty of season-long captains. In Pittsburgh, however, there won’t be a tweet with anywhere from five to 11 players listed as those who will be wearing a “C” in 2026.
New coach Mike McCarthy told reporters on Monday that he won’t use full-season captains. Instead, he’ll name captains for each week’s game. That’s how McCarthy handled the captain designations while serving as the head coach of the Packers and the Cowboys.
The approach is a clear departure from past practices under Mike Tomlin, and another clear sign that some things will be very different with one Mike yielding to another.
Last year, the Steelers had four permanent captains: quarterback Aaron Rodgers, defensive lineman Cameron Heyward, linebacker T.J. Watt, and safety Miles Killebrew. (After Killebrew was lost for the season due to injury, linebacker Payton Wilson replaced Killebrew as the special-teams captain.)
The last time quarterback Tua Tagovailoa started a game in Pittsburgh, it became his last start with the Miami Dolphins. He was benched after the 28-15 loss on a Monday night in December — and he was cut in March.
Fast forward to September, and Tua will be returning to Pittsburgh as the Week 1 starter for the Falcons.
If it goes poorly, Tua may not be starting for very long. If it goes well, and if the Falcons upset the Steelers (Pittsburgh is currently favored by 3.5 points), there will be a very strong reaction in Western Pennsylvania.
Losing to Tua after drubbing him less than nine months earlier will provide the first clear apples-to-apples comparison between new coach Mike McCarthy and his predecessor, Mike Tomlin. Nuances will easily be lost on Steelers Nation. Yes, the Falcons are an overall better team than the 2025 Dolphins. The common denominator is the quarterback; if he plays dramatically better than he did the last time he played in Pittsburgh, Steelers fans will interpret that as an indication that the new boss won’t have the same kind of success as the old boss.
It would be dubbed an overreaction. But that’s what football fans do. With only seventeen games in a season, they all count. They all spark a reaction. And, at some point, the trend of overreacting shows that, actually, it’s the normal and usual reaction to a team losing a game it should have won.
The Steelers have more than a few winnable games in the eight weeks before the bye, including two against the Browns. Anything less than 5-3 will spark high anxiety on and after Week 10, where the Eagles, Broncos, Texans, Jaguars, a road game at the Bengals, and two games against the Ravens are lurking.
The fans who show up in six days will be expecting a 1-0 start. If the end result is 0-1, sphincters will be tightening quickly in the Steel City.
The Falcons will be starting Tua Tagovailoa in Week 1 against the Steelers and they won’t be turning to Michael Penix if they decide to make a change during the game.
Head coach Kevin Stefanski said at a Monday press conference that Penix will be inactive for the season opener. Cooper Rush will be the backup to Tagovailoa.
Penix was cleared for full football activities in late August and did not play in the preseason, but Stefanski said that he has been pleased with the quarterback’s progress as he returns from a torn ACL.
“We’re all on the same page, and feel good about where he is heading,” Stefanski said, via Tori McElhaney of the team’s website.
Stefanski did not say when he thinks Penix will be ready for game action or what the quarterback depth chart will look like once that’s the case, which should make updates on the plans for the position a regular part of life in Atlanta for the near future.
Falcons quarterback Tua Tagovailoa will start on Sunday against the Steelers.
The Falcons finally made the choice today, just six days before the start of the regular season, according to multiple reports.
Tagovailoa was the favorite all along, but Falcons head coach Kevin Stefanski declined to make the choice official. Tagovailoa was seemingly competing with Michael Penix for the job, but Penix is coming off a torn ACL last season and wasn’t healthy enough to make it a real competition.
The Falcons kept four quarterbacks on the 53-player roster, with Cooper Rush and Jack Strand in the quarterback room along with Tagovailoa and Penix. It’s unknown at this point who will be No. 2 on Sunday.
Sunday’s game will mark Tagovailoa’s second straight game in Pittsburgh, as it was also the site of his last game with the Dolphins, a 28-15 loss after which he was benched for the rest of the season.
Tagovailoa will hope he has more job stability as the starting quarterback in Atlanta, but he might not: Given how long it took Stefanski to make Tagovailoa the starter, he might decide quickly to move on if Tagovailoa isn’t working out.
