The Pittsburgh Steelers are cornerback-cursed, and most of it is self-inflicted. They spent more than a decade trying to draft and develop an outside corner worth building around, finally hit on Joey Porter Jr., then traded him to the Dallas Cowboys before he played a 2026 snap.
Pittsburgh got a 2028 second-round pick and a 2027 sixth-rounder for Porter. That future second could become a good player. It also can’t cover anybody this Sunday. Porter is 26, started 41 of his 47 games for Pittsburgh, and broke up 31 passes before the Steelers shipped him out. Still Curtain has already detailed why the Porter trade return feels thin compared with losing a legitimate CB1.
There’s one correction to the usual curse story. Ike Taylor wasn’t literally the last good corner to wear black and gold. Joe Haden was an excellent pickup, Steven Nelson gave Pittsburgh two solid seasons, and Mike Hilton was a terrific slot defender. Taylor was something else entirely. He was the last straight-up drafted-and-developed outside-corner success before Porter, a fourth-round pick in 2003 who lasted a dozen seasons and retired after 2014.
Pittsburgh Steelers have spent a decade chasing their next homegrown corner -- and sent him packing
The Steelers' cornerback draft history after Taylor is ugly. Pittsburgh took Senquez Golson 56th and Doran Grant 121st in 2015; Artie Burns 25th and Sean Davis 58th in 2016; Cameron Sutton 94th in 2017; Justin Layne 83rd in 2019; and Tre Norwood 245th in 2021. Golson never played a regular-season snap. Grant barely saw the field. Burns flashed early and faded. Layne never started a game. Norwood was a rotational defensive back. Sutton became a useful, versatile starter, but he never developed into the kind of outside corner who could erase a top receiver.
That draft record forced Pittsburgh into years of patchwork. Haden and Nelson worked. Ahkello Witherspoon had a productive stretch. Patrick Peterson, Donte Jackson and Darius Slay were veteran stopgaps at different stages of their careers. Jamel Dean arrived this offseason as the latest attempt to stabilize the position from outside the building. The Steelers haven’t been incapable of fielding good corners. They’ve been incapable of consistently creating and keeping their own.
Joey Porter Jr. trade turned old Steelers history into a current roster problem
Porter was supposed to break that cycle. The 32nd overall pick in 2023 had the size and man-coverage temperament Pittsburgh had spent years trying to find. He wasn’t flawless, and calling him an untouchable superstar would vastly oversell it, but he had already become the best young outside corner the Steelers had developed in years. Pittsburgh finally found the answer, couldn’t get an extension done, and traded Porter for future picks that won’t fully arrive until 2028.
Then the position got thinner almost immediately. Dean injured his ankle against Cleveland the day the Porter trade became official. By Friday, the Steelers had ruled Dean out against Indianapolis after he missed all three practices this week. Jalen Ramsey is also questionable with a wrist injury after being limited Thursday and Friday, so Pittsburgh could enter Sunday without Porter and Dean while another major piece of the secondary is less than 100 percent.
Omar Khan responded by adding Sean Murphy-Bunting from Tampa Bay’s practice squad on Monday and Terell Smith from Washington on Tuesday. Murphy-Bunting hasn’t played a regular-season game since 2024 after spending 2025 on injured reserve. Smith missed the 2025 season with a knee injury. They’re legitimate NFL depth pieces, but signing two corners off other teams’ practice squads in two days is emergency roster work, not succession planning.
Rookie Daylen Everette now has a much bigger job than Pittsburgh probably envisioned this early in its season and in his career. The third-round pick was already pushed into extended work when Dean left against Cleveland, and with Dean officially out, Everette is in line to make his first NFL start against the Colts. The Steelers need to learn quickly whether he can hold up outside.
Ramsey’s Sunday status could make the strain even worse, because the Steelers would rather let Everette grow into the job than ask a rookie and two corners who joined the team this week to hold together a secondary that looked deep barely two months ago. Everette’s development now shapes how aggressively Khan may have to attack cornerback again in the 2027 offseason.
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