The Pittsburgh Steelers clearly had the physical advantage over the Jacksonville Jaguars last Saturday night, and S Juan Thornhill thinks he knows why. Having experienced extended stays with the Chiefs and Browns, he knows they do things differently in Pittsburgh. And he thinks that is what allows them to separate themselves from other teams from a physical point of view.

“I would say the difference is just how we work here. It’s a little bit different than each place that I’ve been to”, Thornhill said on 102.5 WDVE following the Steelers’ 31-25 victory over the Jaguars. Talking about the Chiefs, he said, “They have some live periods, but it’s not live tackling every single day that there’s pads on, and that’s how we are here.

“That’s why I feel like, us going into Jacksonville we were, like, a step ahead of those guys. Because if you really watch their practice, they don’t tackle. That was their first action out there actually getting hit in the mouth, having to block somebody, having to tackle, and it showed”.

For the bulk of Mike Tomlin’s tenure as Steelers head coach, he has set a physical tone in training camp. They are one of the few teams that do live-tackling scrimmage sessions, and they do them way more often than anybody else.

The Steelers don’t just emphasize physicality in training camp, either, as it drove their roster-building philosophy this offseason. It’s part of the reason they pursued DK Metcalf and Jalen Ramsey, Malik Harrison and Yahya Black. Kaleb Johnson is a physical running back, and Jack Sawyer is a big boy on the edge.

And all of them embraced the Steelers’ physical, live-contact training camp. Results such as Saturday’s over the Jaguars will only reinforce the buy-in when you see tangible evidence. “With us out there, we looked like we’ve been playing football for a long time. We just looked like the more physical team”, Juan Thornhill said.

Thornhill himself set the Steelers’ physical tone, supplying the biggest hit of the game. Although initially signed as a backup, he is contending for a starting role after the team traded Minkah Fitzpatrick. Needless to say, his buy-in to the physicality of the defense will only help his cause.

Even though the Steelers were more physical than the Jaguars, it was far from a blowout. They shut down Jacksonville’s run game, but the Jaguars also shut down Pittsburgh’s. Both sides held up pretty well in pass protection, the Steelers not even registering a sack.

Of course, now that the first week of the preseason is over, everyone has dipped their toes into the pool. Do the Steelers still have an advantage because of their practice style, or is that over? Will it matter in September, or indeed in January, that they tackled in Latrobe? It’s hard to say it has mattered much, if at all, in recent years. But it’s a nice talking point in mid-August.