Thursday's practice reports handed the NFL one story that's shrinking and one that keeps growing.
Start in Denver, because it's the easy one. RJ Harvey was listed as out of practice Wednesday with a hamstring issue. By Thursday he was back in a limited capacity, and the injury is being described as the very minor sort. That is the cheapest possible version of a hamstring scare: one lost day, then a ramp-up, with nothing pointing toward a multiweek absence. The only real risk from here is re-aggravation, because a hamstring rushed in September becomes an October problem. Denver didn't rush it. A running back who missed one Wednesday and returned Thursday limited is a running back the Broncos can build a week around. Call it a win in a week that didn't hand out many.
Pittsburgh is the mirror image, and I won't pretend otherwise. Joey Porter Jr. left Thursday's practice early with the team's medical staff during the portion open to the media. He was then listed with a back issue again on the Thursday injury report. That landed one day after the Steelers changed his designation to non-injury/conditioning. Read those two facts back to back. A team does not move a corner off the injury designation and onto conditioning and then watch him walk off with a trainer 24 hours later if the plan is holding. Mike McCarthy said Porter was slated to do more Thursday than he did Wednesday — that is a coach describing a ramp-up that got interrupted mid-stride. Porter was a limited participant Wednesday, and McCarthy has already said it's unclear what level he'll practice at, which leaves Week 2 uncertain.
Here is where I won't spin. The facts don't support a hopeful read on Porter. Back issues are a bad genre for cornerbacks specifically, because the job is backpedaling, turning, planting and stopping — the exact movements a cranky back punishes. And the sequence is loud: cleared, then not, inside of a day.
Now layer on the third piece. ESPN published a story framed around the saga of Porter's future with the Steelers, and that framing includes extension and trade buzz. I know the headline and the framing, not the contents, so I won't invent them. But the timing is the argument. Future-of-the-player pieces don't tend to surface on a Thursday when a guy is practicing quietly and fully. When a back keeps flaring and the trade-and-extension chatter arrives in the same news cycle, the football takeaway is straightforward: Pittsburgh should plan its secondary for stretches without him.
That's the conclusion. Denver's scare shrinks by the day, and Harvey's Thursday work is real evidence of it. Pittsburgh's does the opposite — the designation flip, the early exit, the injury report, the future story all point the same direction. Build the Week 2 plan as if Porter isn't in it. If he suits up, the Steelers happily take the upgrade. They just shouldn't need it.
