Steelers d-tackle Chris Hoke says Steelers won’t change anything for explosive Cardinals.

TAMPA: Throughout the playoffs, the Arizona Cardinals’ biggest weapon may have been its image as a loser.

In every round – from the Wild Card win over the Atlanta Falcons; the division victory over the Carolina Panthers; to the NFC title game, a dramatic triumph over the Philadelphia Eagles – the Cards were the underdog in every game despite hosting two of those games.

The general feeling by each team’s fans and media – and perhaps inside the locker rooms – in each round was the game was a free pass to the next round.

Even Eagles’ long-time radio announcer Merrill Reese couldn’t help himself, giving a little jab to the Cardinals in his pregame build up, referring to Arizona’s logo as “Woody Woodpecker.”

Who could blame anyone? The Cards had not hosted a title game since 1947…and didn’t the Cards stagger into the post season after winning the worst division in sports, losing the Minnesota Vikings 35-14 in week 15; and in week 16 to New England Patriots by the ridiculous score of 47-7 before ending the regular season with a 34-21 victory over lowly Seattle?

Didn’t the Cardinals win the horrible NFC West with a less-than-pedestrian 9-7 record?

The “Cardinal” sin in sports to look past or not respect an opponent. 

All three favored opponents committed that sin and are all home watching the Super Bowl on TV.

Will the AFC champion Pittsburgh Steelers make the same mistake?

“They’ve definitely been a team that’s been overlooked,” Steelers center Justin Hartwig said at a media session this week. “They really don’t (have much history). I look back during the end of the season and we went up to New England and took it to them (Steelers dominated the Patriots 33-10). These guys went to New England and lost by 50 points or something like that (actually 40). So in my mind it was a team that was kind of written off at the end of the year. They snuck into the playoffs, I guess they won their division, but they got back into it and they beat some teams and maybe they were a little underappreciated. But at the same time, we’re only concerned with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Not the Arizona Cardinals.”

Hartwig was asked about if Steelers were going to need to score a lot more points than they have so far in the playoffs.

The Cardinals have scored 95 points in three playoff games including 32 against the Eagles.

The Eagles scored 25 in the NFC title game and it wasn’t enough.

The Eagles couldn’t stop the Cardinals despite finishing the season with the third-rated defense in the NFL, No. 1 in the NFC.

The Steelers were No.1 in the NFL.

“I don’t know if anyone has scored 25 points on our defense this year,” Hartwig said (the Titans were the only team, scoring 31 on 12/21). “Obviously Arizona has a highly explosive offense, but I’m really confident in our defense. But offensively, the job at hand is to score as many points as possible. I think that we’ve been fairly productive especially these last several weeks moving the ball and putting points up.

“That’s definitely going to be the challenge,” he continued. “Arizona is a team you don’t want to get into a shootout with, but at the same time, I feel confident our defense can slow them down a little bit and after watching tape, the opportunities are definitely there to put some points on the board.”

Defensive tackle Chris Hoke said the Steelers will not fall into the trap of trying anything different against the explosive but inconsistent Cardinals offense.

“Just lay football and try and continue to do what you do,” Hoke said. “We were the No. 1 team in the NFL on defense, No. 1 against the pass, No. 2 against the run, almost No. 1 across the board. We just have to go out there and play well. Right now the Cardinals are hot. They are playing great offense. But we can’t change things up now. We can’t get scared about what we’re doing.”

Al Thompson can be reached at al.thompson@footballstories.com