New York Jets coach Rex Ryan says in his new book that his Jets team would have beaten the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XLV if they had managed to get past the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC title game.

Ryan, with Don Yaeger, has published "Play Like You Mean It: Passion, Laughs and Leadership in the World’s Most Beautiful Game."

In losing to the Steelers, 24-19, Ryan has now lost in the AFC Championship game three straight times – twice as head coach of the Jets and once as defensive coordinator of the Baltimore Ravens.

"I just watched the Super Bowl (XLV) at home," Ryan writes. "I’m only going to the Super Bowl if my dad (Buddy) or my brother (Rob) is in it. It’s too painful. We don’t even do a party at the house. I thought Green Bay was to going to have the upper hand on Pittsburgh. Their passing attack was giving everyone problems. But I truly believe we would have beaten Green Bay. We only lost to them 9-0 during the season, and we gave them two of the field goals because of mistakes."

You can choose to see this as an example of reckless bravado from an objectionably arrogant poser and gasbag.

That would be a mistake.

This is best understood as an expression of candor from an insouciantly optimistic, fiercely loyal and gregarious character.

Ryan says the toughest decision he had to make when he came to the Jets in 2009 was what to do about Brett Favre.

"After I got the Jets job in January, I had a conversation with Favre and told him I’d be happy to have him come back," Ryan says. "Part of me really wanted to coach Favre and I think we would have been great with him, even for the $15 million he was supposed to cost us if we kept him; but he said he was retiring, and I could just feel that he didn’t want to play here again. It was obvious he wanted to play for Minnesota so that he could try to get his revenge on Green Bay. . . . Favre wanted to stick it to Green Bay. I get it."

Ryan says if the Jets had not drafted Mark Sanchez, "I would have flown down to Mississippi just like Brad Childress did, and I would have brought Favre back to New York no matter what it took, but that wasn’t really our first choice. We didn’t want to wait for Favre and have our team held hostage by his off-season routine."

Jets defensive back Darrelle Revis was a holdout, but Ryan does not withhold his endorsement of his talent.

"Revis played great in 2009," Ryan says. "Green Bay cornerback Charles Woodson had a terrific season and I know he was named defensive player of the year, but I wouldn’t take anybody ahead of Revis. You can’t tell me that Woodson was better than Revis. You just can’t. Nobody was better than Revis."

In 2008, when he was with the Ravens, Ryan recalls coach John Harbaugh looking for a strength and conditioning coach. Harbaugh told Ryan, who was at the Pro Bowl with Ray Lewis and Ed Reed, to interview a candidate who was working with Green Bay.

Ryan had Lewis and Reed come to the second interview of the candidate, whom he does not name in the book.

"I wanted to see if he could stand up to them, if he could handle them," Ryan writes. "The guy never flinched. He was great, phenomenal. Now, some of his ideas were a little different because he had more of a baseball background, but you could see he was smart."

Harbaugh ended up hiring someone else.

Ryan mentions Wisconsin safety Jim Leonhard a number of times. Leonhard played for Ryan in Baltimore and New York.

"(He) has more passion and pride than most locker rooms full of players," Ryan writes. "Here is a guy who is all of 5-foot-8, maybe 190 pounds on a good day, but he won’t back down from anything."

Leonhard was skeptical about signing with Baltimore, where Reed was one of the safeties.

"I told him, ‘You’re going to make it, because we keep good football players,’ " Ryan writes. "That’s all he needed to hear."

Ryan says Leonhard is a player others on the Jets consult.

"You see him with Darrelle Revis and Antonio Cromartie, and they’re always asking him all sorts of questions," Ryan says.

Ryan says different players require different kinds of teaching.

"For instance, Bart Scott is a player I can dog-cuss up and down, all day Sunday, and it doesn’t bother him a bit – goes right off his back," Ryan writes. "But a guy like Shaun Ellis, well, I might have to be more careful, because he reacts differently to criticism. I simply can’t coach every player the same. Even from a teaching standpoint, there’s a difference. Safety Jim Leonhard, from Wisconsin of all places, is a smart dude. Way smarter than me, but that’s not saying much. He can flip through the playbooks and say, ‘OK, I got it.’ And, bingo, he does. It’s amazing."

In the book Ryan talks with disarming honesty and humor about his dyslexia, about being overweight, about Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, about Bill Belichick.

"Do I really hate Tom Brady?" Ryan writes. "I really don’t know Tom Brady, but who wouldn’t hate him? Look at his life. Actually, look at his wife. Every man in America hates Tom Brady, and he should be proud of that."