Here's a sample of quotes following the Steelers' 17-10 loss to the Vikings on Saturday night.
Coach Cowher : We got through the game pretty much injury free. Shaun Nua is the only one; he's got an ankle. Other than that, from a health standpoint, we got through it fine. I don't know if we took a stride. Maybe we took a baby step tonight. We did some things better than the week before but we still have a long way to go in a short period of time.
Were you happy with the first-team offense?Yeah, yeah. Ben [Roethlisberger] did fine. He went out there and we wanted to work a little bit on the no-huddle. One thing you can see is he wants to do it. He's got great command. I thought he had good presence out there. That was good. I thought Charlie [Batch] did a good job in the one-minute. We would like to have not had the turnover to end the first half. We still had some mistakes here and there; too many little things were popping up. We didn't play consistent in the first half.What was the problem on third-down defense?A couple of third-down-and-ones and twos, you're not going to win those. On the second drive we had a penalty by Ike [Taylor], that was a big loss right there. It was going to be third-down-and-12 but the penalty he had on the sideline there, and the third-down-and-one Ryan Clark had a chance to make the tackle in the backfield. The other third down right there the ball got tipped. Troy [Polamalu] was jumping the sight-adjustment to the outside and the ball got tipped back inside. Again, that was a disappointing series from the point of scoring a touchdown but after that the defense did some good things.You said you were eager to see Duce Staley. What were your impressions?I thought it was good. Given the opportunities he had, until I get a chance to look at it, I thought he looked fine.It looks like Nate could use a special-teams niche to get on the active game-day roster, couldn't he?He'll be active game day.Were you close to keeping Ben on the bench today?No, no. He felt good. He felt good [Friday] when we went through the walk-through and he took the snaps there, so I just told him to let me know if he didn't feel good. We never talked about it until we got out there. Like I said, we wanted him to do the one-minute, I mean the no-huddle, and I thought he did a good job of running it.How did Joey Porter look?I thought he looked fine. He was very active out there and I thought he was fine.When you used the no-huddle with Tommy Maddox, was that a change-of-pace weapon? And might this be more proactive?I don't know if I look at it any different right now. Where we are right now, I think Ben is able to do the same things that Tommy did. He knows what he wants to run and he's got full ability to call whatever he wants to call. We have a chance to talk to him if we see certain things. I think it's going to be a nice thing to be able to go to at any point. We wanted to work on it and be able to do it. I know he's eager to do it, so it's going to be another option we'll have.Why didn't you keep Ben in longer?To be honest with you, the training camp he's had, and I've seen him go out in the games, I think he's fine. I haven't seen any rust. He is playing with a lot of confidence right now. I want to give him enough to get a taste of it. That's all I need to see.*More quotes later in the day from Willie Parker and offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt.