When Teryl Austin stepped back into the Dignity Health Training Center for the first time after the 2009 season, it was a practice facility he thought he'd know well – then he saw the changes, like a cafeteria, a bigger weight room, a practice bubble, the entire business office having been moved down the street.
"It's kind of funny at first because you think you remember all the things, but you don't," Austin said with a smile.
Austin has changed as well. The 61-year-old comes off a four-year stint as the Pittsburgh Steelers defensive coordinator to be the senior defensive assistant for the Cardinals, an experienced sounding board for defensive coordinator Nick Rallis and head coach Mike LaFleur.
The last time he was on the Cardinals coaching staff, he was leading the defensive backs. His room included Adrian Wilson, Antrel Rolle and Domnique Rodgers-Cromartie. The team had won back-to-back division titles and reached a Super Bowl.
In the time since, he has been the coordinator not just with the Steelers but the Bengals and Lions as well, he has evolved. A "little more high-strung back then," Austin now feels comfortable viewing a defense from 30,000 feet incorporating all he has learned from different coaches, different systems and a lot of games.
"Most of it good, some not so good," he said with a smile. "It's helped shape me."
With Rallis, the Cardinals already have a coordinator. Austin feels it's important to let Rallis and the position coaches be the voice to the players; his role is observing practice from a distance, talking with coaches about issues that might be missed, and even lending advice to scheduling or other logistics he has picked up in his 22 NFL seasons.
"This is a unique role that I've never had, and the one thing that I was really wanted more than anything was kind of a check system," Rallis said. "I'm going to continue to get knowledge from him. It's not like we just had to sit down and 'let's just go through everything.' It just happens on a daily. He's a huge resource for a lot of people in the building. Mike is constantly talking to him, all the position coaches, a lot of players.
"He's good in the coffee game too, which I respect. He gets the milk involved too, so cappuccinos, cortados. He fits in very well."
LaFleur didn't know Austin well, but he did have a relationship with former Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, who stepped down as Steelers coach at the end of the 2025 season (and opening the door for Austin to come back to the Cardinals.)
"What I really love about it is, because he is not a coordinator he can kind of take a step back and see it from a different lens," LaFleur said. "Sometimes, that's the best lens to see something, because you're not worried about this, that and the other."
Safety Rabbit Taylor-Demerson likes picking Austin's brain when he gets the chance, noting that Austin "is in the background, in the shadows, and he knows a lot of ball."
Austin has a side benefit to coming back. He's also coming home. He and his wife moved back to a permanent home in the East Valley in 2013 (his kids now grown, they recently moved into central Phoenix). The Valley is comfortable even as he learns the new ins and outs of a renovated practice facility.
That includes style of the new role. A couple of decades of being in the thick of every drill at practice leads to muscle memory that takes some effort to break.
"I told Mike last week, it's a little bit different looking at it like this," Austin said.
