New Steelers CB Darius Slay Looks Forward to Mentoring Joey Porter Jr.: ‘I’m Gonna Make Sure to Get Him Right’
Newly acquired Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback Darius Slay looks forward to mentoring third-year cornerback Joey Porter Jr. this season. Slay hopes to give Porter the same wisdom that he passed down to Philadelphia Eagles rookie cornerbacks Cooper DeJean and Quinyon Mitchell last season during their Super Bowl title run.
“I’m gonna make sure to get him right,” Slay said on his Big Play Slay podcast. “I told him, I watched him, he does that cinch in-step where he gets it in. Now, he’s just gotta work on being better down the field. I watched his film, they were calling him for a lot of aggressiveness down there with the pass interference. I’m gonna tell him, ‘You beat him at the line. Just cut him off and now you’re the receiver. Go get the ball now.’”
Porter was the most penalized cornerback in the NFL in 2024, drawing 17 penalties. Porter was called for six penalties, four of which were accepted, in the team’s 44-38 win against the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 13. Bengals star wide receiver Tee Higgins gave Porter fits throughout the afternoon.
Cutting down the penalties is something that Porter must fix, so Slay’s veteran experience and insight could be beneficial.
Porter finished the 2024 season with 70 total tackles and an interception while allowing 53 receptions for 653 yards on 79 targets in coverage, according to Pro Football Focus. It definitely wasn’t a banner season for Porter after finishing fifth in the Associated Press Defensive Rookie of the Year voting last season.
The Steelers brought Slay in as a free-agent acquisition to upgrade their secondary. The six-time Pro Bowl cornerback hopes his impact with the team is much more far-reaching. During his introductory Steelers press conference on March 13, Slay talked about how he plans to mentor the team’s younger covermen, a group that includes Porter, Beanie Bishop, and Cory Trice.
“It’s gonna be great, man, I love that,” Slay said during his introductory press conference with the Steelers “That’s the best part of my job. I love meeting new people. You know, some people don’t like meeting new folks. … I’m very outgoing, and that’s one of the biggest roles I would like to take, just helping mentoring younger guys because a guy did that for me. So, I always gotta return the favor in my way, and that’s how I do it.
“And I do it with genuine love, not by force. It’s because I want them to be great. I want them to always be better than me. Any guy I ever had under me, my job is try to make sure they’ll be better than me, as a player, person, everything.”
Slay, a 13th-year professional, said that he’d always heard good things about the Steelers from Patrick Peterson, who spent 2023 with the team. Additionally, Joe Haden was one of Slay’s favorite cornerbacks when Slay was younger, and Rod Woodson had taken Slay under his wing early in his career.
“When I got drafted, I stayed at his house for about a month and a half, learned football from him,” Slay said of Woodson, widely regarded as the Steelers’ most talented cornerback ever. “We had the same agent, Eugene Parker. … He introduced me to him, and that’s how he kind of drawed me to sign with him, too. He had a lot of guys I looked up to in his game. He had Deion (Sanders), Rod, and a couple of other guys I used to look up to.”
Brenden Howe contributed reporting for this story.