KIRKLAND – Eight years later, Mike Holmgren is still waiting to erase the bad taste in his mouth.
The last time the Seattle Seahawks’ head coach went to a Super Bowl, his Green Bay Packers lost to the Denver Broncos on a late touchdown. That ranked as one of the most difficult losses of Holmgren’s career.
“I thought I kind of failed the team because I couldn’t get them to realize what we were up against,” Holmgren said Monday of the Packers’ 31-24 loss to Denver in Super Bowl XXXII. “I usually bounce back a little bit better. That one was a tough one.”
Holmgren recounted the weeks that followed that game, when he was watching “The Today Show” on television while working out on his treadmill, and saw a story about the signs of depression.
“I’m looking at it,” Holmgren said Monday with only a touch of seriousness, “and I’m saying: ‘No sleep, sex life is bad,’ all these things. And I said, ‘That’s me.’”
While Holmgren is glad to have another chance – Seattle’s berth in Super Bowl XL next weekend will mark his third as a head coach and fifth overall – the Seahawks are certainly relieved to have Holmgren this time of year.
“It was a really comforting feeling (Monday morning) having him get up and talk about, ‘Well, when I was in this Super Bowl we did this. This (Super Bowl) we did that.’ He’s got the experience there,” quarterback Matt Hasselbeck said. “… That is a very freeing feeling.”
Holmgren has plenty of Super Bowl experience, but his last one is the game that has stuck with him.
The Packers were defending champions that year, went 13-3 during the regular season, and outscored their first two playoff opponents by a combined score of 44-17. But he sensed in the days leading up to the game that his team didn’t have quite the edge it needed to beat the underdog Broncos.
“It was very difficult for me to get my guys to believe that the game would be really a tough, tough football game,” Holmgren said Monday. “I couldn’t get them to believe it, and I tried everything.
“I tried being nice. I tried kicking them in the rear end. I tried everything that I could think of.”
Holmgren’s Packers fell behind 17-7 late in the first half before rallying to tie the score at 24 a minute-and-a-half into the fourth quarter.
The game came down to the final minute, and with Denver’s offense inside the Green Bay 5-yard line in a tie game, when Holmgren opted to let the Broncos score so that his offense could get back on the field with some time left on the clock – rather than let Denver kick the game-winning field goal from close range as time expired.
“I thought that gave us our best chance to win the game,” he said Monday.
More than any last-second decisions, Holmgren regrets the way he was unable to get his team motivated for that game.
“We went into the game … our head wasn’t right,” he said, “looking back on it.”
If Holmgren has another regret about his last Super Bowl appearance, it’s that he didn’t appreciate the experience.
“When you go through it, and there’s a little bit of a lapse between the next one, you kind of think about that,” he said. “I didn’t think about or enjoy it enough the last time I did this. So (I told myself) if ever given the chance again, I’m going to kind of soak it in a little bit more. So I’ve tried to do that.”
Holmgren just hopes that this time, he’ll enjoy the aftermath too.
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