Coach Bill Cowher held a final meeting with his players yesterday, then bade goodbye to most of them until they report to training camp at St. Vincent College July 28.

His coaches, however, will welcome one player back soon.

Rookie receiver Santonio Holmes, barred from the Steelers' facility by the NFL until his Ohio State spring session ended yesterday, will return later this month to get a refresher course. Holmes was permitted to attend the May 13-15 minicamp, and that was it.

"We will have some coaches and players in here throwing to him," Cowher said. "It will work out pretty well."

Cowher also issued his first comments about Holmes' May 27 arrest on a disorderly conduct charge in Miami Beach when he refused a police officer's order to get out of the street and onto the sidewalk.

"If you look at the details, certainly there were a lot of people over the Memorial Day weekend who were arrested," Cowher said. "Whatever he did wrong, I don't think he handled it properly.

"I think he'll learn from it. He'll learn to understand the scrutiny he's under. We have not talked face to face about it, but I don't have any long-term concerns. I think he's still a very solid individual, and I'm not going to hold that incident against him, even though we will talk about it."

Full speed ahead for Porter

Linebacker Joey Porter, who had arthroscopic surgery on his right knee May 24, should be ready to participate fully in drills during training camp, Cowher said.

"We may monitor him some, as with some of the other guys that we'll monitor, but he should not be inhibited in any way."

Cowher said Porter decided to have surgery, after consulting with trainer John Norwig and Dr. James Bradley, because of swelling in his knee.

"We came into minicamp and looked at it to see if doing football things would aggravate it," Cowher said. "He still felt it a little bit, nothing that was restrictive. We sat down and talked with him.

"It just felt like it was something that we wanted to take a proactive approach [on] and not wait until training camp and then have it start to bother him. It was something that we were hoping would go away, and it just never did. He should be fine by camp."

Not a movie star

Cowher, who played himself in a brief role in the 1998 Adam Sandler film "The Waterboy," said he has been offered various commercials since the Super Bowl but "no movies."

"I'm still living off 'The Waterboy.' I'm still getting residual checks. That's a heck of a deal ... a heck of a movie."

The tough get tougher

AFC North Division rival Baltimore's acquisition of veteran quarterback Steve McNair from Tennessee this week should make it tougher for the Steelers, Cowher said.

"He's a good quarterback, and Baltimore's a good football team. Kyle Boller was playing really well there the last year or so. He is just another weapon.

"We're in a tough division. We didn't even win it last year. All the teams have done a great job in the offseason. Cleveland and Cincinnati didn't really lose anybody. Baltimore did a good job. The division itself has been upgraded. It was a tough division before ... it's just going to be that much more of a challenge this year."

Where's the ring?

Cowher wasn't wearing his Super Bowl ring yesterday because he said it needed to be resized for his right ring finger.

"This is one of those fingers that got caught in a few facemasks," the former NFL linebacker said.

"And so it's not the straightest of fingers."