Joey Porter nearly talked himself hoarse during Super Bowl week, choosing the NFL's premier event to announce that one of the league's most provocative stars might soon be available to the highest bidder.
Then the game kicked off and The Who performed at halftime and, before you knew it, Joey Porter, media sensation, was reduced to The Whatever. Poor guy. By late Sunday, Joey wasn't even the most significant Porter at Sun Life Stadium.
We're talking about a team captain who breaks ranks whenever things don't go his way. An 11-year veteran who still needs babying. A linebacker whose reputation for vicious play and game-changing talent is not supported by 2009 season totals of one forced fumble, no interceptions and just 41 tackles, fewest since his rookie year.
Oh, there are the sacks. Porter has racked up 90 of those in the last 10 years and led the Dolphins last season with nine.
There are other, younger linebackers on Tony Sparano's roster, however, who show real promise in that particular specialty. Cameron Wake was in on just 23 tackles all season but 5.5 of those were sacks. Charlie Anderson made 17 tackles and two of them were sacks.
What Porter is running into now is the Bill Parcells brick wall. If Joey wanted, he could ask Jason Taylor how that usually works out. But Porter doesn't want to hear anything negative from anybody. For the last half of the season, he spoke with Sparano only on game days.
It's a shame, really, because Porter still could help this team, even if he never comes close again to that 17.5-sack effort from 2008.
What can you do, though, when Porter has talked himself into thinking he's still 23, and not on the verge of 33? All last week on radio row at the Super Bowl media center, he stubbornly tried to talk everyone else into it, too.
To Jim Rome, he whined that it was unfair being deactivated for one game after being granted a couple of days off from practice to rest and then being seen out socializing. To WQAM, he said he didn't have time to "play childish games" as a Dolphins role player, adding, "Let me go find me a job somewhere else." To the NFL Network, he expressed no interest in the Dolphins' youth movement, saying "nobody is good enough behind me to be stepping on my toes."
All those bold words are lost in the echo chamber now. It's enough to make a guy like Porter feel all alone against the Dolphins' brass, which he described as "the machine."
On Thursday the New York Giants released Antonio Pierce, Porter wants the same freedom. He remembers when the Steelers let him go in 2007 and half a dozen teams came running.
He's not that great a catch in 2010 and soon, not only because he asked for it, Joey Porter will be just another former Fish in the sea.
