LATROBE, Pa. — I had something of a revelation on my annual summer training camp trip, which covered 17 camps and two games and 22 teams in 20 locales. It happened on the last stop, in the Laurel Highlands of west-central Pennsylvania. On a hot Thursday with no breeze, in the place where Joe Greene and Mike Webster and Jack Lambert and Mel Blount and Alan Faneca and Levon Kirkland and Hines Ward and Casey Hampton once jousted, the 2017 Steelers took shape under the very physical direction of coach Mike Tomlin.
The receivers and defensive backs, in full pads, did the Oklahoma drill—the ultra-physical one-on-one blocking drill in which the defensive player tries to fight off the offensive player and get to the ballcarrier, and the offensive player tries to block the defensive player to the ground.