New Cowboys cornerback Joey Porter Jr. is finally breaking his silence after a brutal illness kept him out of the Week 5 Thursday Night Football game, revealing he was literally throwing up outside his Uber on the way to AT&T Stadium. That’s right, the dude was so sick he couldn’t even make it inside, and his new team watched the wheels come off, losing a shocking game to a winless Tampa Bay Buccaneers squad.
“Brutal, Not Going to Lie”: Porter Jr.’s Nightmare Week 5
It all went south for Porter Jr. on Thursday morning, the day of his home opener against the Bucs. He started feeling sick, an itchy throat that stuck with him through morning walkthroughs. He reported it to the team, they gave him cold medicine, but it was too late. By the time he was supposed to drive from Frisco to Arlington, he was ready to lose his lunch. He told his Uber driver to floor it, hoping to get to the stadium, but it was a losing battle. “I really just couldn’t hold anything down. I just kept throwing up,” Porter Jr. said Wednesday, his first time speaking to the media about it. “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.” Talk about a rough start with the new squad, huh? Porter Jr., who the Cowboys acquired from the Steelers for a 2027 sixth-round pick and a 2028 second-round pick, had played 48.1% of defensive snaps in their win over the Texans, and the team was ramping him up for a full-time starting role. This was supposed to be his big moment in front of the home crowd.
The Cowboys’ Defense Crumbles Without Him
Instead of a coronation, Porter Jr. was stuck at home watching his new team , the one he was “prepared to play all week” for , stumble to a 24-16 loss against a winless Bucs team led by an undrafted rookie making just his second career start. “It was very frustrating,” he admitted. “The mindset was to get the dub. Obviously, I didn’t get to do that, and we didn’t get the dub. I was pretty pissed in my couple days off.” And who could blame him? While Porter Jr.’s absence doesn’t excuse everything, the Cowboys’ defense looked absolutely gassed, allowing a whopping 241 rushing yards to Tampa Bay. This was Dallas’ third game in 12 days, a brutal stretch that included two 10-hour flights to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. You could feel the exhaustion even through the screen.
Now, with a 10-day gap between that Thursday night disaster and their Week 6 Sunday Night Football matchup against the Green Bay Packers (who are 3-2), the energy around the locker room is way higher. You know Porter Jr. is champing at the bit to get back out there and actually contribute this time. We’ll see if his return can shore up that run defense.
This article was created with AI assistance and published under Seattle On Tap’s editorial standards. See our Editorial Policy.
Originally reported by CBS Sports.
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