FRISCO, Texas -- New Dallas Cowboys cornerback Joey Porter Jr. knew he was in trouble on Thursday morning, the day of his new team's "Thursday Night Football" showdown with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Porter Jr., who the Cowboys acquired in a trade from the Pittsburgh Steelers in exchange for a 2027 sixth-round pick and a 2028 second-round pick, played on 48.1% (25 of 52) of the Cowboys' defensive snaps in their 34-30 road win over the Houston Texans. He and the team were ramping up for him to be a full-time starter after being on the roster for a week, but those plans changed quickly when he woke up that day.
He had an itchy throat in the morning, and that feeling stuck with him during morning walkthroughs with his Cowboys teammates. Porter Jr. reported feeling ill to the team, and they gave him cold medicine to deal with his symptoms. By the time it was time to drive down from Frisco, where Dallas' team facility is located, to Arlington, where AT&T Stadium is just over 35 miles down the road, Porter Jr. was ready to vomit.
He told his Uber driver to floor it to the stadium, so that he could go ahead and vomit when he arrived. That's when he and the team knew he wouldn't be suiting up Thursday night. "I really just couldn't hold anything down.
I just kept throwing up," Porter Jr. said Wednesday after practice, his first media availability since the illness. "I tried to fight through it. I tried taking a nap before the game to shake it off, but I couldn't hold anything down.
That's when they made the call to send me home. ... Throughout the day, it just kept getting worse and worse. On my way to the game when I was throwing up outside of my Uber on the way to the game, it was brutal.
Not going to lie." Week 5 was supposed to be Porter Jr.'s home opener against a winless Tampa Bay Buccaneers team starting Jalon Daniels, an undrafted rookie making his second career start. A happy coronation in front of his new home fans was all lined up. Instead, Porter Jr. ended up watching Dallas lose from home in a shocking 24-16 defeat.
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