LATROBE, Pa. – In the National Football League, it's all about game preparation. Coaches constantly preach it, players believe in it, and the standings bear it out. But there's a difference in preparing for a regular season game and preparing for a preseason game.

Preparing for a preseason game can entail easing up on some of the proven players, because with them it's the big picture that's most important. It also can mean getting some of the backups and younger guys more work, because if they're not sufficiently ready to play the coaches won't be able to get an accurate evaluation of them.

But at this particular time of the year, when training camp is over a week old and there still are five preseason games to play before the regular season opens, taking care of the guys Coach Mike Tomlin calls "the horses" becomes paramount.

As it turned out, it was a little bit more than just a veteran's day off for Willie Parker on Tuesday. It's nothing that has Tomlin concerned, but something that made Parker a spectator on Wednesday afternoon and almost certainly will relegate him to the same status come Sunday night.

"We held Willie Parker out today," said Tomlin. "He got a little inflammation in his knee. It's nothing major. You can characterize it as training camp knee. He'll be OK. We're going to monitor him and make sure we keep him up and running.

"James Harrison is getting better. We're being cautious with him, but he's progressing. Darnell Stapleton's situation is the same (hyperextended knee). Lawrence Timmons (groin) is still fighting through his issues."

One of the issues the Steelers had to deal with on Wednesday was a heat index that cracked 100 toward the second portion of practice, but Tomlin was decked out in his typical ensemble of black hat, black long-sleeve shirt and black shorts.

"That's part of the mental warfare," said Tomlin." I don't want guys to come up to me to talk about how hot it is, because I don't care. I hope it gets hotter."

A big portion of the evaluation process for the young players is going to be how they perform on special teams, and this camp being what it is, there has been no shortage of time devoted to that.

"I like the speed and the intensity of the drills," said Tomlin. "It's very difficult to simulate that element of the game out here in practice, and you don't want the young guys to be shocked by the speed of the game on Sunday night. I think they're doing a good job of simulating that intensity, they're getting better, they have a finisher's attitude."

And that's the bottom line when it comes to this portion of the preseason – getting the players prepared but also being aware of the importance of them being able to finish the regular season.

"Along the line of training camp being what it is, we tried to rest Ben (Roethlisberger) a little bit today, to give the other guys some work so his arm doesn't get weary," said Tomlin. "We intend to do the same thing tomorrow with Charlie (Batch). It's all part of the team-building process and getting these guys through. They trust us to challenge them and make the camp tough as it should be, but they also trust us to take care of them. That's what we're doing."