While most of the draft class was signed to deals relatively quickly, it took until the eve of training camp for the Pittsburgh Steelers to get their top two rookie under contract. First-round deals are fairly standard at this point outside of some language issues, but the contract for 32nd-overall CB Joey Porter Jr. was trickier for multiple reasons.
The most obvious reason is the fact that the 32nd-overall pick in 2023 happened to fall in the second round because of a forfeited first-round selection leaving only 31 picks. In almost every other year for the past couple decades, pick 32 would be the last pick of the first round instead of the first pick of the second.