After practicing on weekday mornings during training camp last year, the Pittsburgh Steelers are moving practice at Saint Vincent College back to 1:55 PM/ET this year. It’s a decision that Mike Tomlin said is due to the heat.
As in he wants more of it — literally — as he told reporters today after the Steelers’ final minicamp practice.
“Wasn’t hot enough last year. To be quite honest with you, heat aids in the development of physical conditioning. It makes it a more stressful environment. And that’s what we go to camp for, we go to camp to get better and if it’s a little more miserable later in the day, that’s what we want,” Tomlin said via ESPN’s Brooke Pryor.
After a year of mid-morning practices, Mike Tomlin shifted training camp practice back to afternoon starts.
Why?
“Wasn’t hot enough last year.” pic.twitter.com/kx4jLUx5Dr
— Brooke Pryor (@bepryor) June 12, 2025
Tomlin explained the rationale for switching to mornings last year was to allow players to take better care of their bodies.
“A lot of times they’re working to rehydrate, but dinner was running up on them, and so they didn’t have the appetite to eat. And so, we just feel like with the early practice schedule, it just creates an opportunity for better wellness and keeping guys upright and rolling.”
Clearly, Tomlin didn’t feel as though there was any meaningful change in player health and wellness with the shift to morning practices, and challenging guys in the heat seems to be more important. There’s going to be games in the heat early in the season, and especially during the preseason, and the Steelers being able to be well-conditioned and handle the elements is important.
It wasn’t as if Pittsburgh got off to a slow start last season though, and the heat component didn’t matter much in the regular season. While the Steelers went 0-3 in the preseason, they won in Week 3 against the Los Angeles Chargers on a day where temperatures reached 94 degrees. Their ensuing Week 4 loss came in a dome, so there’s no clear weather-related effects to how the Steelers actually performed early in the season last year.
Practicing in the heat should make things more difficult for the Steelers, and Tomlin wants to see how this team handles adversity and the hotter weather. It’s not as if there’s going to be a huge spike in how much hotter the weather is with practices starting a few hours later, but the sun should be beaming a bit more with the 1:55 starts that make things a bit more difficult for the Steelers.
As far as the physical conditioning component goes though, players can lose more water weight in the heat and potentially help guys get in the shape they want to be in. That’s one potential benefit of later practices, although with the amount of fluids they need to replenish, it might not have as tangible of an impact.
Either way, Tomlin feels the later practices are the best for Pittsburgh’s development, and the team will have to work in a little more heat to get ready for the 2025 season.
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