Latest news on Chukwuma Okorafor after Patriots OL surprisingly leaves team – NBC Sports Boston

Has Chukwuma Okorafor played his last snap with the New England Patriots?

The Patriots placed the veteran offensive tackle on the Exempt/Left Squad list on Saturday, meaning he is currently not with the team and does not occupy a spot on the 53-man roster for Sunday’s Week 2 game against the Seattle Seahawks.

So what’s going on with Okorafor, who signed a one-year, $4 million deal with the Patriots in the offseason and was their left tackle in Week 1? The 27-year-old is “stepping away to consider his future in the NFL,” Karen Guregian reported Saturday.

“Typically, players on the Exempt/Left Squad list receive that designation when they leave the team without notice,” Guregian wrote. “But Okorafor’s representative has been in contact with the team and informed them that the offensive lineman is reconsidering whether he wants to continue playing.”

Okorafor played almost exclusively as a right tackle during his first six seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers, but switched back and forth between left and right tackle during the Patriots’ training camp and preseason, admitting to Kayla Burton of NBC Sports Boston that he had a hard time making the transition from right to left tackle.

Okorafor was then benched in favor of Vederian Lowe in the first quarter of the Patriots’ Week 1 win over the Cincinnati Bengals when he allowed a sack on the left side. He did not return to the game.

Head coach Jerod Mayo said he had a conversation with Okorafor that was more about the lineman’s mental health than when (or if) he would return to the team.

“I spoke to Chuks and at first it had nothing to do with football,” Mayo said on Sunday on 98.5 The Sports Centerabove Zack Cox of the Boston Herald. “I called him, and it had everything to do with the guy. I wanted to make sure he was OK, that he was in a good frame of mind and really thinking about it and considering that this is what he wants to do.

“But again, I look at these as long-term relationships and care more about the individual than anything else.”

Lowe was the Patriots’ left tackle on Sunday against Seattle, and it sounds like the Patriots will have to prepare to be without Okorafor for the foreseeable future.