Joey Porter Jr. discusses special education major and expectations for 2020
Joey Porter Jr. has a plan for his life after he wraps up his Penn State football career.
Porter, a redshirt freshman cornerback for the Nittany Lions, wants to take a leadership role in his mother’s efforts to help the special needs community. In 2003, Christy Porter started the Jasmine Nyree Day Center. Naming it after her second daughter, Christy opened the center to provide parents in Kern County, Calif., with the kind of daycare resources that she wasn’t able to find when Jasmine was diagnosed with autism at age 2. Five years later, she launched the Jasmine Nyree Educational Center. More recently, she and her husband, former Steelers All-Pro linebacker Joey Porter Sr., bought the 180,000-square-foot Holy Innocents Parish in Pittsburgh’s Sheraden neighborhood with the intent of turning it into a community center offering services for preschoolers, school-age youth and adults.
Joey Jr. is majoring in special education and, inspired by his parents and his sister, is looking to someday take over the family business.
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“My mom had this plan since I was 6 years old when she started her first daycare in Bakersfield, Calif., where we used to live,” Porter said. “Ever since then, our family has been involved with that whole process of trying to help others, including my sister. It’s been a huge part of my life, and I would love to continue doing what I’m doing with that.”
Jasmine is one year older than Joey, and he said she’s taught him the importance of “being more patient with people, being more loving and understanding."
“Not everybody has had it as easy as the next person,” Porter said. “You’ve just got to be more understanding and more loving and more caring.”
Of course, the Porters have another family business, and Joey Jr. is on the right career track in that one, too.
Joey Porter Sr., played 13 seasons in the NFL, mostly with the Steelers, winning All-Pro recognition four times before retiring in 2012. With all four years of college eligibility remaining, Joey Jr. has a lot of football left to play before he can start thinking about the pros. But he opened some eyes during his redshirt year, impressing teammates and coaches with his speed and athleticism, and especially with his length.
“He has like 35-inch arms,” senior cornerback Tariq Castro-Fields marveled. “When he practices, it’s kind of like he can just touch you from afar. I tell him, let that be the icing on the cake. Always work on your technique because your [length is] always going to be there. He has speed, he’s like 200 pounds. I mean, he’s got it all. He’s going to keep growing and keep growing. The sky’s definitely the limit for Joey.”
Porter said his size – 6-foot-2, 198 pounds – makes it difficult for receivers to get off the line of scrimmage, and it has obvious advantages when he’s in coverage. He’s so rangy that some observers have predicted he’ll eventually end up at safety. It would echo a switch that his father made at Colorado State, starting as an H-back before finding a home on the defensive line as a junior and quickly developing into a draft-worthy prospect. But Porter said he’s comfortable right where he is.
“I feel like a corner, I play like a corner, my technique is like a corner,” he said. “That’s the position I love to play. If I have to move out of that position, I will. But right now, I feel like I’m in a good spot.”
Porter came to Penn State last year with fellow cornerback recruits Marquis Wilson, Keaton Ellis and Daequan Hardy. Wilson played in 10 games, while Ellis saw action in all 13. Porter and Hardy held onto their freshman eligibility, with the former getting snaps in four games, breaking up a pass in the Nittany Lions’ romp at Maryland and making his first career tackle in a lopsided victory over Purdue.
With three-year starter John Reid having moved on to the pros, those young cornerbacks are vying for significant playing time this fall. Castro-Fields called them the “big four” and predicted that they’ll have a major impact on the Nittany Lions’ fortunes. “I think they’re going to have a huge year,” he said.
Porter agrees with that assessment. “We’re all ready to play,” he said. “We all compete at a high level because we all want the best for each other. I feel like that’s across the whole room, from the leader of our room, Tariq, going all the way down to the freshman in our room, Joe Johnson. I feel like we’re all on the same page to get better and work hard, and I feel like we’ll all be ready.”
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