Team Pass  members can watch Bill Cowher's press conference.

Coach Bill Cowher:  A couple things here before we get started, first of all in regards to the head coaching vacancies that exist in the NFL, I can tell you that we have been contacted by three teams for Russ Grimm and they are Detroit, New Orleans and Green Bay.  One team has contacted us about Ken Whisenhunt, and that is St. Louis.  All that I will say to you is that in accordance with what the league guidelines are, we are going to allow them to talk.  Most of these will be by phone and they will be done later in the week.  I will talk to the players tomorrow, as I have talked to the coaches, there will be no more questions about it.  There will be no discussions about it.  Our focus this week will be on the Indianapolis Colts.  I don’t think it will be a distraction to our team at all.  Having gone through the process myself if anything, it is inspiring to know that there is a potential opportunity for them.  I have talked to Russ and Ken.  It will it be later in the week because we are in the process of game planning for this game and we will provide that opportunity for them.  But there will be no more discussions about that from here on out.

We have made a roster move.  Quincy Morgan fractured his fibula in the game the other day.  He will be operated on tomorrow.  We will place him on injured reserve and we have signed Lee Mays to take his position on the roster.  Lee will be back with us. 

We have one payer doubtful, that is James Harrison with an ankle.  We have six players that are probable: Jerome Bettis has a hamstring, Kimo von Oelhoffen has a knee, Ben Roethlisberger has a thumb, Clark Haggans has a toe, Travis Kirschke has a groin, Joey Porter has a hand. 

Obviously, in the playoffs any win is a big win for us and I will say this, regarding what happened.  Carson Palmer is a bright young player in the National Football League and I have tremendous respect for him, not just as a player but the way he handles himself.  I think the league will be better off with a player like that for the future.  He will come back strong from this.  I feel bad for him, knowing him just through Troy Polamalu, he is a hard working guy and he will be back and we will be trying to stop this guy again next year, there is no question about it.  But you hate to see those things happen.  No one felt worse about than Kimo von Oelhoffen or really, our football team.  We have a lot of respect for that football team we played.   It is going to be a battle from here on out playing that team.  There is so much good talent over there.  They are well-coached.  We are very respectful of them and we feel very fortunate to be able to move on.  We are playing a team now that is the number-one seed in the AFC and in many peoples’ eyes the number one-team in the National Football League.  We are going to have to play so much better than we played the last time we played them.  We are going to have to play better than we played last week.  It is going to take a flawless effort on our part.  We are going to have to bring everything we have and more to this football game to have a chance to compete and or win this game.  I think we understand that and at the same time, that is why it is the playoffs and why you play the game.  We’ll show up.  We’ll be there and hopefully we’ll be able to do some things better than we did the last time we played them.

Were you at all surprised or disappointed by Marvin Lewis’ comments about not crying like Ben Roethlisberger?

I would like to think it was said out of frustration.  The last thing we ever do is comment on things that their players say, I could spend a whole press conference with some of the things that come from that team.  I would like to think that it was said out of frustration.

Does it bother you that some people are now starting to call your team dirty?

I don’t know who has done it. I think that is something that papers have a tendency to pick up on and they want to make a story that really isn’t there.  I don’t know what the basis of that would be.

Can you play your underdog role to an advantage?  Is there something to be said from a strategy standpoint as being an underdog?

If it is, tell me how I can use it to an advantage.  We are where we are.  This is the best team in football and obviously, the last time we played there we had an opportunity to play and we didn’t play very well.  Obviously, the only advantage I think that we have is the fact that we have gone through it.  They were more physical than we were the last time we played them and we didn’t handle the noise very well.  We didn’t play very good football.  If we do the same thing when we show up this time, the results will be no different. 

Does having Marvel Smith and Ben Roethlisberger automatically make you feel you will be a little better than last time?

I don’t know if it automatically does that.  I would like to think that we are playing a little bit better than the last time we went in there.   Certainly, we have some guys back that have played, it was Marvel and Ben’s first game back.  But still at the same time, we had several other guys that had been playing and they had some guys, they played their guys.  It is going to come down to execution.  We had 10 penalties the last time we were there.  We weren’t able to really get anything going offensively, we gave up the big play and the first play of the game put us in the hole, almost like we did the other day.  We are going to have to play in all three phases.  Our kicking game wasn’t real good the last time, and special teams, we missed a makeable field goal, we don’t get a good punt out of the end zone and they barely got a first down and are kicking field goals.  It is going to take a supreme effort on our part in all three phases for us to have a chance. 

Looking back, their defense was very effective.  What were a couple aspects that you saw that night from that defense?

Their defensive line, they create a lot of havoc.  We all know about Dwight Freeney and the force that he is.  Those other guys inside, Montae Reagor, Corey Simon and Larry Triplett, those guys are very disruptive.  They do a lot of slanting.  They may not be big physically, but they play strong.  They play low.  They play with leverage.  With Raheem Brock and Robert Mathis on the other side of Dwight Freeney, they have six guys that they rotate in there and they are fresh, they are strong, they are active.  They can be very, very disruptive.  What they do is they free up those linebackers that can run in Gary Brackett, Cato June and David Thorton, they can run and you better account for 21 and 20.  Those two safeties are factors.  They are excellent tacklers.  They have great team speed.  They are very disciplined defensively and like I said, you have to be on top and have everybody accounted for if you want to have success on a regular basis. 

Can you comment on Bob Sanders?

He is a good football player.  He plays the game hard.  He is decisive.  He has takes great angles and when he comes, he brings it all.  This guy is as good a safety as there is in the National Football League. 

Have playing in two games in domes helped your team deal with the crowd?

We will find out.  I would like think that having been there once, you know what to expect.  Hopefully we will have learned.  It wasn’t as loud in Minnesota.  But I think when we walked out of the RCA Dome, I think there was no question that it was louder than we anticipated going in.  So we understand what it is going to be like and we will have to deal with it. 

Were the false starts because of the noise?

It was loud.  Some of it was that.  We had three of them. Only one was the line, two were the receivers.  So I guess that is progress.  If we can keep our receivers more disciplined than we should be okay.  We are going to have to deal with it this week and hopefully apply a little bit of discipline on Sunday. 

With Quincy Morgan out, do you lean more on Heath Miller if you want to spread things out? 

We have some options there.  We will see how the week goes. 

How adept have you become with the silent count?

You have to become a little bit unpredictable with that.  You don’t want to give them the advantage of being able to get off on it as well.  We will have to work that element of it and we will see.  We will have a different approach than we had the last time going in.  It has some effect, I will tell you the best way of dealing with the noise is play good.  If you play well, you can make some plays and not let their crowd get into it.  That is one of the best things you can do.  If we just go out there and play like we have on the road with a lot of teams, but if you go out there and give up the first play of the game and let it be a touchdown, that is not the greatest way of trying to silence a crowd.  That has a lot to do with it, how you play, not so much what you do. 

Will you use Ike Taylor on kick returns?

That will be one of the options we will look at, as well. 

Is Nate Washington liable to be dressed and a factor?

It certainly is an option that we will look at.

Are you confident in your offense’s ability to score?

I am and I think our players are.  We have put up some points. When we had to put up some points.  We have been throwing the ball when we have had to throw the ball.  This will be a big challenge again this week.  But I think that we would not have gotten where we are right now if we were not a balanced football team.  Yes, we want to run the football but we feel that we have some playmakers that throw the ball, as well.  Our quarterback is playing as well as he has played this year and I think he has been in this situation before so he won’t be overwhelmed by it.  But we know the challenge.  This is a good football team we are playing and we are going to have to be able to do both because they didn’t get to winning 13 straight games, or whatever it was, by being one-dimensional.  We cannot allow them to continue to tee off and we have to be able to run the ball but at the same time, we have to make them respect us throwing it.  We are going to have to be balanced.  We are not going to be able to be one-dimensional in this game on either side of it.

Has Cedrick Wilson done things differently to emerge?

No, sometimes games unfold and opportunities present themselves and he has done a good job.   Ben has put the ball out to him and he has made some plays. He made a big play against this team last time we played them.  We haven’t been a big throwing team so I guess when some of these guys catch three or four balls, it is the news around here.  These guys are good football players.  To their credit, sometimes they would like to be on a team that throws the ball 35 or 40 times and some of their numbers would probably be a lot greater than what they are because their number should not indicate how they are as receivers, it is just kind of how the game unfolds sometimes and how we play the game around here. 

Can you talk about facing a playoff team in the playoffs that you played during the season?

I don’t look at it from that perspective.  You know in the playoffs that when you have played a  team once, that there are some things that you are going to see that they have done to you, and how they played you that you may counter the second time through, and them with you.  The first time you play someone, you are not sure how they are going to approach you on both sides of the ball.  I think the second time through, you have a better sense of what they are about and so there is a little bit of the adjustment that goes into the game planning on both sides of the ball.  I think that it is a little more of a chess match as opposed to time getting acquainted when you play each other for the second time.  I just like the fact that we played in that dome already once.  That will not be foreign territory to us going back there the second time.  It wont make it any easier, trust me, but at least we know what we are walking into.

Does it help having experienced the emotions of playing on the road at Cincinnati?

When you go on the road and experience those emotions, it doesn’t just take any one situation like that to take place. Those things happen. We were playing a team that was a rivalry team, a lot of things were said leading up to that game, a divisional opponent, we were playing them in the playoffs. That in itself lends itself to the talking that takes place between players. In the playoffs, when you’re playing on the road that’s the same thing. You’re dealing with a hostile environment and the finality of where you are in the playoffs exists and you’re the underdog. You are. We understand that going in. We’re going to in there and we’re going to give it our best shot. We’ve been in this mode now, you lose you go home. I’m not so sure it hasn’t been that way for the last four or five weeks. We understand the level of desperation that we are going to have to play at. It’s going to take our best football. We’ve got to be able to stay focused. There’s a fine line between going in there and being emotional and allowing that to have an adverse affect, which happened to us last week. We settled down more in the second half of that game. We lost our composure at times. I don’t want us to lose our emotion but we can’t lose our composure. There’s a fine line when walking that and at times we kind of lost that the other day. We have to play with the same emotion; we have to play with that same level of desperation or else we are not going to move on. [We have to] play smart and executing, play fast but not out of control. That’s the things that we have to be able to do. If we can do that then we have a chance and if not then it will be our last game.

Did playing a high-octane offense like the Bengals help with your preparation for Cincinnati?

From a preparation standpoint, yeah because we practiced the no-huddle last week. We’re ready for it. It will help from that standpoint and it makes your practices that much faster. Our practices will be real fast because it was all no-huddle and that’s the way it will be again this week.

Three out of four road teams won in the playoffs; does that speak to the parity in the NFL?

I think that’s true. It can come down to one or two games. You can see that. Where those one or two games were in the year can make a difference. It’s really where you are at the end of the year, how you’re playing. I think that really has a lot to do with it, not that circumstances don’t take place. When you have an opportunity to earn a bye (week), that’s a big advantage. So you may make decisions there accordingly. You want to be playing your best football and you want to be playing with confidence so that there isn’t a sense of overreaction when you hit a little adversity during the course of a game, which you’re going to face when you play in a playoff game. There’s going to be an ebb and flow in the game, you have to be able to deal with that and how you respond to that has a lot to do with the outcome of the game. There is a fine line. There are probably a couple plays that can happen early in the game that can really affect the game one way or the other.

Your team responded both times when Cincinnati went up by 10 points twice.

Which is huge and we talk about that all the time. You have to be able to weather a storm. You have to be able to overcome things, not overreact and respond. It’s important that when you feel a game start to sway, momentum-wise, to the other side that you’re able to come up with some series or some play that can get it back to your side. It’s very important that you’re able to respond to certain things and you have to keep playing. You can’t overreact to things. You can’t control the last play or what took place. The only thing you can control is the next play, the focus that has to take place and the trust. You can’t deviate from that. Sometimes the bullets start to fly and you try to do more than your job and that’s when it starts to fall apart. Our guys have been pretty good about trusting each other, staying within what they’re being asked to do, finding a way to keep battling back and pecking away. Just keep playing. If you do that you may find yourself, when it’s all said and done, with an opportunity to win it.

Is recognizing that the biggest advantage to having experience?

Being able to understand that going in and to be able to deal with that when it happens. It’s one thing to talk about it here in a nice air conditioned room but also when you’re out there you’re dealing with the emotional peeks and valleys. You have to channel that in the right way. You can’t lose your composure but there’s got to be a resolve, there’s got to be an emotion that you’re able to sustain through the course of 60 minutes. There’s going to have to be a focus between the whistles and [we can] not allow it to filter out outside the whistle and making good decisions. Sometimes things happen in a game that you don’t always agree with but you have to move on. The people that can do that and channel that energy the right way; deal with the circumstances and how you respond has a lot to do with the outcome.

In your experiences as a No. 1 seed, is it tough to stay sharp late in the season?

I don’t remember losing many games coming off the bye (week). Of course we’ve lost that next game a few times. I think it’s up to the individual teams. If you look at a lot of the coaches in this tournament right now, they’ve been there before. They know their team a lot better than anybody on the outside. Don’t count on that for any kind of advantage. We have to go in there and play our best football and recognize the strengths that we’re facing against this good football team that we’re playing and make sure that we do the things that we do well and try to do it better than them.

Are the things that the Colts do similar to the things that Tampa Bay did when Dungy coached them?

It would be hard to go back that far and compare. Tony’s like a lot of good coaches in this league, he’s taking the talent that he has and he’s doing what they do best. Their defense has a lot of team speed; they have active safeties and if they get up on you they can make it a long day for you. They have a lot of the same qualities. They’re a solid defense that does not give up a lot of big plays. We have to be very patient against them. I think that is the challenge that we have, is if we have to stay patient.

Do you practice getting different personnel on the field against a no-huddle?

We have to try to do it. We have to be careful because they will hurry up to the line of scrimmage and try to run a play before you can get your guys on and you can get [caught] with 12 guys [on the field]. We’ll have to be judicious with how much we do substitution-wise. If we’re going to do it we have to do it very quickly. We did it last time against them. But we have to be ready to play with the people out there on second down; we have to be ready to play with them on third down. We understood that going in [the last game] and that’s how we’ll go into this game thinking as well.

Are you comfortable with the memo the NFL sent out about artificial crowd noise?

Yes I am.

Can you comment on Dungy’s family situation?

Everyone’s heart in America went out to Tony and Lauren. I knew Tony and his kids when I was with him in Kansas City. I have not had a chance to talk to him personally, which I will have a chance to do before the game. We all understand the respect and no one has handled it more inspirationally than Tony and his wife. That’s an unfortunate part of our profession; we live in a fish bowl. We have to experience that with the rest of America. Those are things that you would sometimes like to share with just those who are close to you. Tony found out that he’s very close to a lot of us. He’s a very special guy. My heart and prayers go out to him, Lauren and their family. He’ll get through it. Tony’s a strong guy.

Can you comment on your offense in the first game against Indianapolis?

We did not play very well defensively or offensively. We had 90 yards of total offense. There’s no question that we have to play better. Their defensive line obviously jumped us at the line of scrimmage. They did a great job of penetrating. The safeties show up. The one play I can still see is when we had a draw play on third down and seven and Bob Sanders was 20 yards deep and playing half the field and he took an angle and [he] and Willie [Parker] were one-on-one and [Sanders] stopped him about a yard short of the first down. They played well. They tackled well. They jumped us at the line of scrimmage and we had some opportunities. We couldn’t get any third down continuity on offense. It was hard to get any rhythm. If we start moving the ball a little bit then you have a chance to get a little flow. It’s important that we’re able to convert third downs and finish drives and establish a little bit of that line of scrimmage. It’s probably going to be a feast or famine type of game. We understand that going in and that’s the challenge that we have.

Can you talk about Ike Taylor shutting down Chad Johnson in the three Bengals games this year.

Ike has played well. Ike has taken that challenge on about mid-way through the season. We started to putting him on some of the premiere guys because of his ability to match up size-wise, athletic ability-wise and he’s taken that on as a challenge. He goes out there and practices every day. He’s looking to get better every day. He’s taken a big step this year. Now he’s got a chance to come back and look to play a little bit better than he did last week and I think he will. This will be a big one. Every time you see a preview of this game you keep seeing that first play [an 80-yard touchdown pass to Marvin Harrison] shown over and over again. So he’s going to live with that. We don’t have to say much about that anymore. He’s a good football player. He’s learning and he’s growing tremendously. The strides he’s taking from the beginning of the season to where he is now is something he will build on and I think the best is still ahead of him.

Do you try to take away one aspect of an offense when it is as balanced as they are?

You have to be careful. Edgerrin James, of all the weapons that they have with [Marvin] Harrison, [Reggie] Wayne, [Brandon] Stokely, Dallas Clark and the quarterback [Peyton Manning], with the play-action, can hit you down the field which we have experienced as well. Edgerrin James makes some unbelievable runs. He’s one of those guys that, we had him pinned a couple times in the first game, and you look up and he gains a yard or he gains two yards. He is a very strong runner, great body lean, he’s always falling forward. You have to be very careful. There’s no one part of this team that you can say, ‘If I stop Harrison then we can stop them.’ There’s too many of them. So we’re going to have to be very disciplined. We’re going to have to take a cat-and-mouse approach to them and try to get them into third downs and try to limit the big plays. [We have to] try to get them into some third downs and get off the field and try to move the ball offensively and keep the ball out of their hands. That’s the best approach that you can take against them. It’s not been too successful by many people but that’s what we’re going to try to do.

Was it big for San Diego to hold James to 30 or so yards in beating them in Indianapolis?

It was. [San Diego] was able to get some pressure on Peyton and got him out of sync. At the same time they were able to move the ball. They threw the ball somewhat and they got a couple big plays. The big run at the end of the game, when Indianapolis was able to come back, was a big play. It’s going to be one of those games that, if we can play our best football, we’re going to have to do it for 60 minutes. This is not a game that’s going to be decided in the first three quarters. You’re going to have to sustain that approach and that focus for 60 minutes.

Did you confuse Manning in the second quarter in your first meeting?

I don’t know how you measure the success. Peyton is a guy that there is nothing that you can show that he hasn’t seen. They do a good job and don’t give you a lot of formations. What he’s seeing in those formations that he’s in, everybody is trying at some point and some way so he’s seen it all year long. You have to be patient sometimes with what you show them. But at the same time you can’t jeopardize what you’re responsibilities are. Again there’s a fine line that goes with that. We’re all looking at the play clock knowing that at some point they’re going to make a decision and do what they have to do. We have to ready to play the snap at any point. It’s a little bit of that cat-and-mouse game. He’s too good of a quarterback, when he sees a defense, he’s knows where to go with the ball, particularly when they’re all on the same page.

What made you take a chance on hiring Ken Whisenhunt?

Kenny was here. Kenny earned the opportunity. I was around him when he was coaching the tight ends and I was impressed with that. There’s a lot to be said when you can hire from within.