Nov 15, 2004 By Commentary Mike Ciarochi 4 min read

CLEVELAND – Respect of the game. “I’m big on that,” Steelers coach Bill Cowher said in the moments after his team had handed the Cleveland Browns a 24-10 defeat.

Twice during his post-game comments, Cowher had to stop himself from saying too much. But his message got out anyway.

Cowher doesn’t have much respect for Cleveland coach Butch Davis because Cowher doesn’t believe Davis has much respect for the game.

At one point, Cowher singled out Browns quarterback Jeff Garcia, noting that Garcia “is a very fierce competitor.” At another point, Cowher said, “I have a lot of respect for a lot of people on that football team. What is sad is that a couple of players give it a very bad reflection.”

Cowher’s points of reference were Browns defensive end Gerard Warren’s mid-week comment that he intended to injure Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and a pre-game fracas that resulted in Steelers linebacker Joey Porter and Browns running back William Green being ejected without having played a down.

Cowher was guarded in his comments about the pre-game incident because he didn’t witness all of it and didn’t want to pre-judge the incident, its participants or its implications.

“I don’t know the circumstances,” Cowher said. “But I support Joey.”

As for Warren’s comments, the league intervened and warned him that he had better watch his step. The league surely would have intervened if Warren had gone through with his attempt to go for Roethlisberger’s head. As it turned out, Warren never got close enough to the Steelers quarterback to take any kind of shot, let alone his best shot.

But it was the message Warren was sending that bothered Cowher the most.

That and that Davis didn’t do anything to prevent it from happening.

“It is unfortunate,” he said. “That is not for me to judge. They have to deal with their business the way they feel they want to do it. If they want to condone it, they can condone it. This was a big game. Respect the game.”

Cowher wanted to continue that thought, but cut himself off shortly after he began.

“It bothers me. … I’ll leave it at that.”

“Those comments made it a little bit easier for us to get up for this game,” wide receiver Hines Ward added. “Coach Cowher mentioned it last night. We don’t need no guy to get us out of focus. When someone says something like that, you want to go out and defend your teammate.

“With the comments that he made, I mean, we’re coming in here 7-1 with a rookie quarterback. When he said that, it made us want to come in here and win, that’s all.”

Or, as Cowher said it, “We do our speaking on the field.”

Ward was asked about Cowher’s reference to respect of the game and he seemed eager to finish all of the thoughts his coach had begun.

“You do have to respect the game,” Ward said. “You don’t have to threaten injury to be good at this game and to say that is disrespectful of the game itself.

“But that is a reflection of their coach, too. He didn’t come out and say his player was wrong, so he must think he was right, that it was OK what he said. We don’t try to hurt our opponents. But a war of words is just that, words. We prefer to use actions and I think we showed that today.”

The Steelers have maintained their focus through a very tough stretch of games and that likely will remain a constant because of Cowher’s respect of the game.

“In the National Football League, we are not that much better,” Cowher said. “You have to respect everyone. You can say what you want, but Cleveland should have won their last two games. Everybody in this league can beat anyone on any given Sunday. If you start to take yourself too seriously, then that is the trap that you fall into. We are not going to do that.”

The Steelers travel to Cincinnati next Sunday for another AFC North Division game. Another Sunday, another tough opponent. After that, there will be another one and another one. Any of them can beat the Steelers.

But what the Browns did for the Steelers, besides handing them a game Sunday afternoon, is to remind them. It brought respect to the front of their minds. That little reminder can carry this team an awful long way.

Mike Ciarochi may be reached at mciarochi@heraldstandard.com