It came as a surprise on Thursday night when it came out that Pittsburgh Steelers rookie offensive tackle Broderick Jones was getting the start at right tackle over Chuks Okorafor. Okorafor hadn’t been on the injury report that week and his play hadn’t been any more of a concern than that of starting left tackle Dan Moore Jr.
So why the change?
Well, Okorafor told the media why it happened. Sort of. According to Okorafor, when he talked to the press after the game, he was healthy but got benched for some things he said during last week’s loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Okorafor didn’t expand on the context of his comments but said “The way the game was going last week, I kind of said stuff that I shouldn’t say. I just, being in Year 6, I can’t like act out the way I was acting out.”
We can read between the lines here and assume Okorafor was openly criticizing either teammates or coaches during the game about how poorly the offense was playing. While we wouldn’t disagree with Okorafor as last week’s offense was not great, we applaud head coach Mike Tomlin for trying to squash that sort of mutiny in a hurry.
