5 Pittsburgh Steelers free agents who won’t be back in 2022
By Tommy Jaggi
Steelers OT Chukwuma Okorafor
After an awful start to the 2021 season (which was essentially a continuation of his 2020 season), Chukwuma Okorafor has made some improvements over the past few weeks. Still, this isn’t enough to keep him around for the future, considering what offensive tackles with starting experience go for these days.
Just a few years back, the Cleveland Browns gave former Steelers swing tackle, Chris Hubbard a 5-year, $36.5 million contract in free agency. While Okorafor probably won’t fetch as much, he just turned 24years old and already has two full years of starting experience. There are a lot of desperate teams that will overpay based on these factors alone.
As an unrestricted free agent, I can’t see the Steelers throwing enough money at Okorafor to keep him around. The team already has Zach Banner riding the bench and it seems like a strong possibility that the Steelers could use one of their top two draft choices on an offensive tackle.
Okorafor didn’t start playing football until later in life and he is still young enough where he can turn his career around, but I can’t see the Steelers wanting to invest even more time in him when the results haven’t been great over the past four years.