Former Pittsburgh Steelers safety Ryan Clark probably summed up the changes in the team’s rivalry with the Baltimore Ravens best recently. He said that if he hit former Ravens running back Willis McGahee today the way he did more than a decade ago, he’d go to jail for it.
Of course he exaggerates for effect, but the point is that a lot of that brute physicality has been legislated out of the game (for better or for worse; I’ll stay out of the debate), and teams have adjusted accordingly by moving to different player archetypes that accentuate other skill sets.