The Pittsburgh Steelers wrapped up their 2016 mandatory minicamp on Thursday and afterwards head coach Mike Tomlin gave the media some brief overall thoughts on what he’s observed over the course of the last several weeks.
“It’s been a great camp, it’s been a great offseason and by that I mean the guys worked hard, they came in relatively good shape, it’s improving,” said Tomlin. “I watched it improve in front of my eyes.”
As usual, Tomlin made sure to let his team know how important it is for each and every one of them to have their bodies in prime physical condition for the start of training camp.
“The next five weeks are going to be big and that’s one of the things that we stressed in terms of leaving them with,” said Tomlin. “What they do from here on is probably going to define them from a conditioning standpoint in 2016. That’s one thing that they can control. They’ve got no control over what we ask them to do and things of that nature but they do have great control over their readiness. So we challenged them in that area and look forward to watching them work to that and the next move for us is Latrobe.”
While some players such as cornerbacks William Gay and Senquez Golson will be heading to Florida in order to complete their offseason conditioning, defensive end Stephon Tuitt said this past week that he will me one of several players who will continue working at the Steelers facility.
“I’m going to stay behind, actually,” said Tuitt. “Do some recovery stuff and stay here and get stronger and get ready to roll out to training camp.”
Six weeks from today the Steelers players will need to report to Saint Vincent College for the team’s annual conditioning run. The team’s first practice will take place the following day, Friday, July 29.
“They better work at it,” Tomlin said in regard to his players conditioning.
