“He was born to coach,” said Stewart, now the quarterbacks coach and special teams coordinator at West Virginia. “He is going to be a great, great, great coach in the NFL.”

Tomlin and the Steelers wouldn’t seem to be a good fit. The Steelers have been the NFL’s strongest advocate of the 3-4 defense since Noll installed it in 1983, and they draft players to suit that scheme. Tomlin is an advocate of the 3-4 and the Tampa 2 coverage schemes, but insisted he isn’t wed to that defense.

To prove that, he will retain defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau — who at 69, is more than twice as old as Tomlin — and the LeBeau zone blitzing schemes that have been a strength of the Steelers defense since the mid 1990s.

“As coaches, we have to be flexible schematically to what our guys do well,” said Tomlin, a Tony Dungy protege who got his first NFL job coaching the Bucs’ defensive backs in 2001. “If we say this is our personality and this is all we’re looking for in terms of a player, then we might miss out on someone that has special skills. It has to be a blending of both if we are going to be consistently good.”

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Consistently good is what he plans to be. Unlike Cowher and Noll, who both inherited losing-record teams, Tomlin is being handed a talented, experienced team with a 24-year-old quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, and a 1,494-yard rusher in Willie Parker that is only one year removed from winning the Super Bowl.

“It’s our goal to contend for it every year,” Tomlin said.

He isn’t ready yet to discuss retaining any other assistants, but has the freedom to hire his own staff. He and director of football operations Kevin Colbert will share personnel responsibilities, as Cowher and Colbert did.

While Tomlin is an enthusiastic, motivational coach who has a reputation of getting the most from his players, don’t look for many Cowher-like sideline blowups.

“I don’t pay attention to how I behave,” Tomlin said. “I just try to be myself. For the most part, I lean on the side of being calm. I like to think clearly in times like that.”