Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones said the team spent a lot of time negotiating a trade with the Steelers for cornerback Joey Porter Jr. that made sense for the Cowboys — and only completed the trade after the Steelers’ price dropped.
Jones said on 105.3 The Fan that what the Steelers initially asked for was more than the Cowboys were willing to give up, but they ultimately got the Steelers to lower the price to a 2027 sixth-round pick and a 2028 second-round pick.
“At first the price was a little high for us, and then we got to a point where we could handle it,” Jones said.
Jones said the Cowboys know there’s a chance Porter leaves in free agency after this season, but they believe if he does, they’ll get a 2028 compensatory pick that will largely make up for the loss of the 2028 second-round pick.
“We had to make sense of this trade if Joey left after this year,” Jones said. “That’s why the 2 in 28 is a compensatory pick. If he left, we’d probably get a 3 or 4 for him and get him back for Joey in 28 when that 2 was up. So that made a lot of sense. It protected us.”
Even if Porter turns out to be just a rental for the rest of this season before going elsewhere, Jones believes the price was right, once the Steelers lowered him.
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