Anatomy of a coaching change

Published 10:47 pm Saturday, February 9, 2008

KIRKLAND — Mike Holmgren had already given Seattle the golden age of Seahawks football.

A first Super Bowl appearance. An ongoing run of five consecutive playoff appearances. The trade that made Pro Bowler Matt Hasselbeck the franchise’s quarterback and cornerstone. A league-wide reputation as an elite organization, a premier destination that players now seek.

This week, the veteran coach gave the Seahawks yet another gift: the smoothest transition between coaches the NFL has seen.

“Yeah, it is unprecedented,” said agent Bob LaMonte.

He was in a unique position to broker Seattle’s coach-on-layaway deal, which has Holmgren finishing his contract in 2008 and Jim Mora already under contract to replace him beginning in February 2009. LaMonte represents both Holmgren and Mora.

“Really, what’s unprecedented is the concept behind it,” LaMonte said. “It was really Mike’s idea.”

Seahawks president Tim Ruskell and chief executive Tod Leiweke said the same thing. Rather than stay out of the decision on his replacement, as Holmgren had vowed he would last month while announcing he will return for 2008 only and then leave, he did Seattle a huge favor.

“I think that Mike deserves a huge amount of credit because, clearly, this isn’t how it typically works,” Leiweke said. “Often a coach will say, ‘Well I’m going to play it out next year and we’ll see how I feel.’ But coach Holmgren has enough respect for this organization that he decided to give ample notice. It really allowed this organization to build a succession plan.”

This Kumbaya vibe flowing through Seahawks headquarters is relatively new.

It’s well known that when Holmgren arrived in Seattle in 1999 to be the coach and general manager, fresh off two Super Bowl appearances in Green Bay, the Seahawks had plenty of overpaid, underachieving veterans who poisoned the locker room environment. They also had divisions within the executive chain, so much so that Holmgren was forced to give up his general manager title following the 2002 season.

In came Leiweke, then Ruskell. Seattle evolved into a better salary cap situation from which to sign free agents. It made some astute draft choices. The previously middling franchise began winning like never before, and suddenly everybody loved everybody.

As the Holmgren-Mora transition shows, they still seem to.

“The feeling that coach had about this organization early on was that there was some acrimony. That doesn’t exist anymore,” Leiweke said. “This really is on the other end of the spectrum of that. We have a succession plan, we’ll have an orderly transfer of power, and we’re doing it all with coach’s support and enthusiasm.”

This, in a league where unfulfilled, wink-wink promises to assistant coaches that they will eventually take over the head job are becoming more common. Colts assistant Jim Caldwell has one — but no head-coaching contract — to succeed Tony Dungy in Indianapolis, though Dungy hasn’t said when he will retire.

Assistant Jason Garrett was supposed to be Bill Parcells’ replacement-in-waiting in Dallas, then the Cowboys chose Wade Phillips last year to succeed Parcells.

Gregg Williams, like Mora in Seattle, had the title “assistant head coach” in Washington and was the players’ and coaches’ choice to succeed Joe Gibbs last month. Redskins owner Dan Snyder interviewed Williams for the Gibbs’ job four times — then bypassed him and hired former Seahawks quarterback coach Jim Zorn on Saturday. Williams is now the defensive coordinator in Jacksonville.

“All those were predicated on a promise upon a promise. I didn’t want to do that,” LaMonte said in a telephone interview on the day the Seahawks announced Mora will replace Holmgren next year.

So he and the Seahawks sought and got league approval for the unprecedented, coach-on-layaway contract for Mora — four years, at about $5 million per season, among the highest salaries for a coach in the league. Yet for 2008, he remains Seattle’s defensive backs coach.

“If they are both working contractually for the same team, you can elevate them within that system without opening the job up to the public,” said LaMonte, a former high school teacher who has been doing negotiating for 25 years.

“It’s never been done.”

So Mora, 46, gets a new deal that also incorporates the roughly $2.5 million Atlanta still owes him after firing him as its head coach last year. No wonder he’s happy.

Holmgren gets a final, farewell season that has Mora and Hasselbeck already saying they will be ultra motivated to deliver Holmgren a Super Bowl title as his parting gift — then freedom to do anything he desires, including becoming a coach or general manager again somewhere else, something he hasn’t ruled out. No wonder he’s happy.

And the Seahawks get tranquility amid what usually is a franchise-altering change.

No wonder they are happy.

“We are a stable franchise,” Ruskell said. “We’re unified.”