Nearly 72 hours later, Beanie Bishop Jr. is still all smiles.
If it hasn’t sunk in yet what the Steelers rookie cornerback did Sunday night, maybe it will when he gets that package from the Jets equipment staff. Bishop’s two interceptions of 40-year-old Aaron Rodgers, the oldest player in the NFL and a Super Bowl champion who once slayed the Steelers on that stage, soon will be commemorated by A-Rod himself.
Thanks to the help of fellow West Virginia product Pat McAfee and his weekly interview with Rodgers, the NFL’s ninth-leading passer of all time has agreed to autograph the two balls Bishop picked off at Acrisure Stadium. After all, they were the first two of Bishop’s pro career, so it’s not as if he’s tweaking Rodgers just for fun.
“He’s been in the league since I was a kid,” Bishop said Wednesday after practice, grinning from ear to ear. “Obviously, I have a lot of respect for him.”
Bishop kept those balls, and they’re now in the hands of the Steelers equipment managers. They’ll make sure they get to the Jets facility for Rodgers to sign them.
On McAfee’s show, Rodgers discussed how now that he’s in his 20th season, he often has players approach him postgame to tell them they grew up watching him or he was their favorite player. Bishop couldn’t find him amid the sea of bodies on the field, but Rodgers kept it short and sweet when asked if he’d autograph the balls.
“Yeah, I can do that,” Rodgers said.
Rodgers has the best touchdown-to-interception ratio in NFL history of players with at least 1,500 career attempts — Russell Wilson happens to be second — but he hasn’t only blessed Bishop this season. In Week 1, 49ers linebacker Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles also scored his first NFL pick off of Rodgers.
No word on whether Flannigan-Fowles pursued a Rodgers signature. But Bishop already has cemented himself as a fun-loving little brother of the Steelers secondary, so it’s no surprise that he’s enjoying this moment. Another undrafted slot cornerback, veteran Thomas Graham, is effectively Bishop’s backup on the practice squad. That didn’t stop him from crashing Bishop’s interview with reporters Wednesday and asking him about his big plays, much to both of their delight.
“He’s just doing everything that rookies should,” fellow cornerback Joey Porter Jr. said Sunday night. “He’s coming into meetings. He’s listening. He’s doing his job. He wants to learn. That’s all you can really ask for a rookie. I was in that same position last year. He got two against A-Rod. Not a lot of people can say that.”
Bishop confirmed Wednesday what linebacker Patrick Queen noted after the game: that he intercepted passes in the same situations in practice last week. Granted, no one could predict that a Rodgers fastball would ricochet off the chest of star receiver Garrett Wilson, but Bishop made the play.
For whatever reason, they come in bunches for Beanie. Bishop didn’t have an interception in college until his fourth season at Western Kentucky, but he got two in that game, as well, a 48-21 rout of Middle Tennessee. Only a slight difference in picking off Nicholas Vattiato, a true freshman who was making his first college start, and Rodgers in his 244th in the pros.
“He’s gonna be in the Hall of Fame one day,” Bishop said. “Just to be able to get my first interceptions off of him, he’s being a good sport by signing it.”
Practice report
There’s no Wednesday injury update because the Steelers play Monday night. Their first injury report of the week will come Thursday, but running back Cordarrelle Patterson — who has missed the past three games with an ankle injury — returned in at least a limited capacity.
The Steelers did have a visitor at practice in former Florida Gators coach Dan Mullen, now a college football color commentator for ESPN. He’s on the call for Thursday night’s Pitt-Syracuse clash at Acrisure Stadium, which is why he’s in town. After Steelers practice, he posed for a photo outside the locker room with the Florida alumni on the team: cornerback C.J. Henderson, receiver Van Jefferson, outside linebacker Jeremiah Moon and practice squad running back La’Mical Perine.
First Published: October 23, 2024, 8:50 p.m.
Updated: October 24, 2024, 3:25 a.m.