KIRKLAND – For a man who went through the most lopsided loss of his Seattle Seahawks career, watched one of his closest friends get taken away in an ambulance, and tossed and turned his way through three hours of sleep, Mike Holmgren looked and acted remarkably chipper Monday afternoon.
Dressed in a collared shirt and showing no signs of mental or physical fatigue, the Seahawks’ head coach handled the plethora of Chicken Little questions about Sunday’s 37-6 loss to Chicago with unexpected grace.
“There’s not a panic sense in the (locker) room,” said Holmgren, who arrived on the team plane at 5 a.m. Monday and was at the team headquarters a few hours later. “We just do what we do: roll up our sleeves and go back to work.”
Holmgren was in such a good mood that he gave his players the entire week off, despite their putrid performance the previous night.
“I wasn’t going to be punitive about it,” said Holmgren, whose team has a bye next Sunday. “Heck, we took one on the chin, and that happens. We’ve been practicing hard, working hard, and we have a number of guys who need time off because of injury.
“We did this last year, and they very much held up their end of the bargain (by winning eight games in a row after the bye). … I feel comfortable with this.”
The loss may have exposed a lot of problems on the team, but it was the least of Holmgren’s concerns as of early Monday morning. While the team plane was flying back from Chicago, it had to make an emergency stop in Rapid City, S.D., after assistant coach Ray Rhodes began feeling dizzy.
Rhodes, who was hospitalized twice during the 2005 season because of stroke-like symptoms, was taken from the plane to a hospital Monday morning but showed no signs of being in any danger. He was back on an airplane by Monday afternoon, heading back to Seattle.
“He felt faint, but our medical staff and training staff were right on it,” Holmgren said. “Everything they did exactly by the book. Had it been someone else – I don’t know this, but I’m guessing – there is a possibility that we would have flown all the way to Seattle and taken care of it here.
“But they did absolutely the right thing, and it worked out. I’m glad it had a good ending.”
Rhodes and the rest of the assistant coaches will have some time off this week, while Holmgren is also planning on getting away for a few days. But during the down time, he’ll undoubtedly be asking himself some of the same questions the media was throwing at him Monday afternoon.
Among the topics from Sunday’s loss:
* Pass protection
“We had a couple things last night when we zigged when we should have zagged because of what the Bears were doing,” Holmgren said. “We’ve got to fix that.”
* Walter Jones
“We were all a little too human (Sunday) night,” Holmgren said, refusing to use Jones’ sore ankle as an excuse for the three sacks the Pro Bowler gave up Sunday night. “With Walt, I expect great things from him every week. When it’s not great, when it’s just good, I want to know what’s wrong.
“… While he played a good football game, our Pro Bowl guys have to carry the team. That’s the expectation I have for them every Sunday.”
* Hasselbeck’s two interceptions
“I’ve got to find out if he’s trying too hard,” Holmgren said. “He was frustrated last night, things weren’t going well, and he was trying to make something happen. You have to fight that urge. You must protect the football.”
* The seven penalties
“Those are not physical errors,” Holmgren said. “Those are concentration. You could say, why does it happen? Well, maybe they were too pumped up. But to my way of thinking, there’s no excuse for those kinds of things.”
* Whether the team will be able to bounce back
“They all have a lot of pride,” Holmgren said. “Typically they come back and want to show their teammates, show me, show you, show their families and everybody that that was not the way that we are.”
Defensive end Bryce Fisher said that the Seahawks were embarrassed by the loss and will be ready to come back with renewed motivation.
“It is definitely a hit on our pride,” Fisher told reporters on Monday. “Anybody who can stand there and take a punch in the face a couple times and be smiling afterward doesn’t need to be in our locker room.”
Holmgren wasn’t exactly smiling on Monday, but he didn’t seem overly concerned either.
“This team will bounce back,” he said. “We have the bye now, and we need the bye because it will give some of our injured players a chance to heal up.”
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