By BOB LABRIOLA

Steelers.com

 

This is the week to be careful of espionage. The week to change signals, disguise plays, and in general, to be very, very careful of all the inside information that’s being communicated behind closed doors.

 

After all, Kirby Wilson was the running backs coach for the Cardinals from 2004-06.

 

Well, that’s not exactly what the hype machine had in mind when it was cranking itself up for the Steelers’ trip to University of Phoenix Stadium this Sunday for a game against the Arizona Cardinals, but that is a fact, just as it is a fact that Ken Whisenhunt and Russ Grimm were on Bill Cowher’s staff here from 2001-06.

 

Whisenhunt is now the Cardinals head coach, and Grimm is the team’s assistant head coach, but those aren’t the only current connections between the Steelers and Arizona’s current football team. On the roster, there are Sean Morey, Rodney Bailey, Mike Barr and Chukky Okobi; on the coaching staff, there are Kevin Spencer, Billy Davis, Mike Miller and Matt Raich.

 

It became apparent fairly early during Coach Mike Tomlin’s weekly news conference that this issue meant more to the media than it did to him. The issue was the subject of the second question.

 

“It is really a non-story for me, to be honest with you,” said Tomlin about playing a team coached by two of the finalists for his job. “It is a big game because it is the next game. I am here. I want to be here. I am glad to be here. If it is a story at all, it is their story, not ours. We have to prepare to play. It’s a big game because the Cardinals are our next opponent.”

 

The 2007 NFL season has been one that brought sign-stealing to the forefront because of the Patriots cheating scandal, but Tomlin said he won’t take any extra precautions because of the number of former Steelers who’ll be on the opposite sideline on Sunday.

 

“You really just have to prepare to play your game,” said Tomlin. “That’s more of a sign of today’s NFL. There is mobility in the coaching ranks, there is free agency, there is mobility with the players. It’s really not unusual. We have Kirby Wilson on our staff who coached last year at Arizona, but I would imagine that’s not going to be much of a story this week.”

 

Not enough time for that to be a story, because there will be attention paid to whether the Cardinals will have the stadium roof open to allow the heat of the day to flow in, or closed to keep everything in the relative comfort of 72-degrees.

 

There will be attention paid to whether the Steelers will wear their white jerseys on the road, as usual, or whether the Cardinals will wear white and force the Steelers into their black shirts.

 

And there will be attention paid to Ben Roethlisberger and how he compares his relationship with Whisenhunt to the one he currently has with coordinator Bruce Arians.

 

“I don’t care what jerseys we play in. We aren’t going to concern ourselves with variables that don’t matter,” said Tomlin. “The quality of our play is going to determine how we perform, and I mean that. Some of the things that people spend a lot of their time talking about are irrelevant to me, in terms of getting prepared for football games.”

 

Such as the weather ...

 

 “We used to think it was an advantage to us when I coached down in Tampa when it was a hot day and somebody would come to our place to play,” said Tomlin, “but the reality is that we were in just as much danger as our opponent because we practiced in that weather all week. So, we probably went into the game with less in the tank than our opponent. So, it is neither here nor there as far as I am concerned.”

 

Such as whether the current Steelers have gotten over their loyalties for Whisenhunt and Grimm and are committed to the program he has installed ...

 

“That was a non-issue for me. You expect that,” said Tomlin. “If there wasn’t a degree of loyalty among veteran players and the men who coached them, then that would be a sign of a problem. That comes with the territory. When you work in close quarters with men and you make personal sacrifices to compete, those kinds of relationships form.

 

“I had no intention of trying to break down those relationships. I was brought in here to do a job. I focus specifically on the job that I need to do and I knew that over time, my shared experiences with the players would create similar feelings. There is really no other way to combat that other than to go about your day-to-day tasks and understand that over time, we will have shared experiences.

 

“We are three games into shared experiences. That is part of it. That is human nature. That is people working with people and that is what any business is about, whether it is football or something else.”