Picking things up: The last few days have been a learning experience for safety Juan Thornhill, who signed with the Steelers in the offseason, but minicamp is his first time taking part in the team’s offseason program.<\/p>\n
“It was great. Amazing, honestly, just watching them, how they operate,” said Thornhill of his initial impression of the defense and the overall team approach. “I am just trying to get filled in and play as hard as I can. It’s just watching everybody. And the intensity of practice is unbelievable.<\/p>\n
“It’s all about the intensity, how hard everybody plays, how much we compete, the way that guys are going after the ball, it’s unbelievable.<\/p>\n
“It’s really hard to explain.”<\/p>\n
Thornhill, who is entering his seventh season in the NFL, signed a one-year contract during free agency. He has appeared in 87 games, starting 74. He has 335 career tackles, 232 of them solo stops, eight interceptions, including one returned for a 46-yard touchdown his rookie season, six tackles for a loss, one sack, 24 passes defensed, one forced fumble and one fumble recovery.<\/p>\n
Thornhill was a part of two Super Bowl Championship teams, Super Bowl LIV and LVII, with the Kansas City Chiefs and spent the last two years with the Cleveland Browns.<\/p>\n
And now, he is happy to be wearing black and gold.<\/p>\n
“When you have a team that’s out there willing to make each other better, each and every week, that’s how you enjoy it,” said Thornhill. “That’s how you have fun. If you’re just out there just going through the motions and not really competing, what’s the point? That is what I enjoy.”<\/p>\n
Thornhill has joined a secondary that is now loaded all around, including fellow safeties Minkah Fitzpatrick and DeShon Elliott, and it doesn’t stop there.<\/p>\n
“There are elite guys at every position,” said Thornhill. “We have corners that can lock anybody up, safeties that can tackle and that can lock anybody up as well. We have a lot of guys that can step in. If one guy goes down, or one guy is tired, we have another guy that’s coming in. It’s going to be fun.”<\/p>\n
The addition of Thornhill brings another solid veteran to the position, but despite being a veteran, he said he is also open to learning from those around him.<\/p>\n
“I’m that type of person that I can get advice from anybody,” said Thornhill. “You can always learn. There are rookies here that might know something that you don’t know. I tell the rookies all the time, if you see something with me that I could do better, let me know, communicate it. That’s how we make each other better. I don’t want to ever push a guy away because he’s younger than me, because everybody has something that they can offer and bring to the team.<\/p>\n
“I definitely try to help to help the younger guys. Right now, I am still learning the playbook. But any other advice, on or off the field, I’m definitely that guy that you can come to.”<\/p>\n
And one piece of advice he would offer to any rookie or young player before training camp is simple.<\/p>\n
“A lot of guys think it’s the lifting, those quick twitchy drills that you need to focus on before camp,” said Thornhill. “You need to do those as well.<\/p>\n
“But the main thing you need to focus on is running. It’s that simple. Run miles, run fast, run hard as you can, because that’s what you’re going to be doing in camp.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Picking things up: The last few days have been a learning experience for safety Juan Thornhill, who signed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2055],"tags":[198,7,3515,6,914,520,57,2360,915,426],"class_list":{"0":"post-125445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-steelers","8":"tag-featured","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-minicamp","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-non-sponsored","13":"tag-pittsburgh","14":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers","15":"tag-pittsburghsteelers","16":"tag-sights-and-sounds","17":"tag-steelers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114673554914267295","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}