National Football League

Who knew? Tomlin, Ryan 'similar'

Published Jan. 18, 2011 2:56 p.m. ET

foxsports

One is loud. One isn't. One speaks his mind. One doesn't. One has a Super Bowl title as a head coach. The other's still in search of one. But don't tell Pittsburgh's Mike Tomlin that he's not like New York's Rex Ryan. The Steelers coach actually thinks there are similarities between the two.

Who knew?

Tomlin isn't the type to brazenly predict his team will win the Super Bowl. And he doesn't figure to ever make use of a weekly press conference to point out that the upcoming game is ''personal,'' as Ryan famously has during this postseason.

Tomlin also works for an organization that would, in all likelihood, politely decline allowing HBO cameras to document the team's training camp, as the Jets did this past summer for a reality series.

But throw all that out for a second. During his weekly press conference Tuesday in advance of the AFC championship game between his Steelers (13-4) and Ryan's Jets (13-5), Tomlin implied that if someone were given that kind of behind-the-scenes access to his team, they'd discover that the Jets' and Steelers' styles aren't as contrasting as you might expect.