For Weeks Seven and Eight of the NFL’s 2023 season, three Pittsburgh Steelers will be participating in the league’s annual Heritage Program to celebrate the melting pot that is the NFL.
OTs Obinna Eze and Chukwuma Okorafor along with DL Larry Ogunjobi will wear flag decals of their international roots for the next two weeks. Eze and Okorafor were born in Nigeria while Ogunjobi has family who also hails from Nigeria, though he was born in the United States.
In a press release issued Thursday, the NFL explained how it will celebrate the next two weeks.
“Across weeks 7 and 8 of the 2023 season, over 330 players and coaches will return to the field wearing international flag decals – with players adding flags to their helmets and coaches wearing patches on jackets – to represent the ever-growing pool of various nationalities and cultures that make up the League.”
With each year, the NFL expands its reach. That includes its now yearly slate of London games with games also being added to Germany starting in 2022 with two more played in 2023. The league has also explored other markets like Spain and Brazil where American football is quickly becoming popular. Brazil, for example, has a die-hard Steelers fan base. It’s likely Pittsburgh will soon be playing internationally, potentially in Mexico or Ireland in 2024.
Okorafor moved to the United States when he was 10, attending Western Michigan before Pittsburgh drafted him in the third round of the 2018 NFL Draft. Since, he’s gone on to start 57 games and been the team’s starting right tackle for nearly every game since 2020.
Eze signed with the Steelers’ practice squad earlier this month. He didn’t move to the United States until 2015 but quickly became a top high school recruit and attended TCU. Undrafted in 2022, he spent time with the Detroit Lions before being waived. A big and long developmental tackle, he’ll try to hang around the Steelers’ roster the rest of the season.
Ogunjobi’s parents moved from Nigeria to the United States in 1993, a year before he was born. A third-round pick of the Cleveland Browns in 2017, he signed with the Steelers for the 2022 season and inked a three-year contract extension this past offseason. He has 2.5 sacks in his 21 games with the team.
Other notable players around the league who will participate in the program include Arizona Cardinals QB Kyler Murray (South Korea), Baltimore Ravens EDGE Odafe Oweh (Nigeria), Chicago Bears WR DJ Moore (Jamaica), and Denver Broncos WR Jerry Jeudy (Haiti).
