SEATTLE — Mike Holmgren walked into his first head coaching job as a relative unknown: a lanky, unassuming 43-year-old former offensive coordinator who was being asked to bring the Green Bay Packers back to respectability.
As Holmgren himself admitted last week, “No one knew who I was.”
When it came to Holmgren’s arrival in Seattle seven years later, nothing could be further from the truth.
When the limousine dropped off the $32 million man at the Seahawks’ Kirkland practice complex in Jan. 1999, the eyes of the NFL were on the coach that was being asked to single-handedly save Seattle football.
When he took the training camp practice field at Eastern Washington University that summer, Holmgren walked beneath a 100-foot-high likeness of himself that hung from a school’s athletic complex.
And when Holmgren led his Seahawks onto the field for that first season, the city of Seattle was told by an aggressive marketing campaign that it was “NOW time.”
Ten years later, having taken the franchise to unprecedented heights but also having gone through hardships that had rarely been a part of his career in Green Bay, Holmgren will be making what could be his final walk along the Qwest Field sideline this afternoon.
“For what he’s meant to this league and to this organization,” quarterback Matt Hasselbeck said, “it’s going to be a special day.”
Emotions might be high today — and not just Holmgren’s.
“It’ll definitely be kind of hard,” defensive tackle Rocky Bernard said of Holmgren’s farewell game. “Just the way he turned this organization around, it’ll be kind of sad to see him go.”
During his time in Seattle, Holmgren has touched many lives, created many memories and won more games than any coach in franchise history.
But there were plenty of lumps along the way, particularly early on in his career. The fact that Holmgren will likely get a long, heartfelt ovation this afternoon says a lot for how far he has come.
With his 6-foot-5 frame and three Super Bowl rings — one as head coach of the Packers and two more while serving as an assistant coach in San Francisco — Holmgren arrived in Seattle with near legendary status but also with a confidence that some viewed as arrogance. A 6-10 record in Holmgren’s second season with the team didn’t help win over the fans.
“I think my reputation when I was first here was that I had every single answer in the book,” Holmgren admitted last week. “I don’t know, maybe I portrayed that somehow.”
St. Louis Rams receiver Torry Holt recently painted Holmgren’s outward persona with a more blunt brush.
“A lot of people think he’s (a jerk),” Holt said a couple weeks ago, using frank language while comparing Holmgren to a body part. “But I like his (jerk)-ness.”
Longtime Minnesota Vikings defensive tackle John Randle, who finished his career in Seattle, had a similar view of Holmgren from afar.
“My first impression watching him was how he seemed very standoffish from the players,” said Randle, whose Vikings teams battled against Holmgren’s Packers teams for most of the 1990s. “He seemed like a guy you couldn’t talk to, like a guy who always saw it one way and wouldn’t look at things from the family perspective or the family-guy perspective.”
When Randle joined the Seahawks as a free agent in 2001, he quickly found out that Holmgren was, in Randle’s words, “just the opposite” from what he thought.
During Randle’s first days as a Seahawk, friend and former Minnesota teammate Korey Stringer died of exhaustion while practicing at training camp. While Randle was stretching out for one of his first Seahawks workouts, he felt a large hand pat him on the back.
It was Holmgren, telling Randle that he was sorry for the loss and that Randle was free to take some time off if he needed it.
“That really opened my eyes,” Randle said. “… At times, I found myself talking to him not only about football things but about life.”
As a football coach, Holmgren has made his reputation not only in strategy but also as a motivator. While offensive coordinator Gil Haskell calls him “a brilliant offensive coach,” Holmgren’s players often talk about his ability to inspire.
“He should be a motivational speaker when he’s done,” said Bernard, who has played all seven of his NFL seasons under Holmgren.
Of course, not all the pre-game and halftime speeches have been of the hugs-and-kisses variety. Last Sunday’s game at St. Louis, for example, included a halftime dressing-down from the veteran coach, inspiring his team to a comeback win over the Rams.
“There’s no sugar coating with him,” cornerback Marcus Trufant said. “He’ll tell it the way it is. He expects the best out of you every time, and that’s what he gets.”
Haskell, who has been a Holmgren assistant for 15 of the past 17 seasons, said that one of his boss’ strengths has been his unique sense of his players’ needs.
“He has a great feel for the players,” Haskell said, “when they’re tired and how hard we have to push them. … He was harder on the team when we were winning. He was so, so hard on them because he knew they were good.”
The winning came later. Holmgren’s first few years in Seattle were more about shuffling players in and out of town and an impatient fan base that wondered why NOW time was taking so long.
When the 2001 season got off to a slow start, some fans started calling for Holmgren’s head. After the team went 7-9 in 2002, Seahawks team president Bob Whitsitt stripped him of his duties as general manager.
But the end of that 2002 season, Haskell said, may have been the most important stretch of Holmgren’s tenure. After a 4-9 start, Seattle rallied to win its last three games while the 27-year-old Hasselbeck began to emerge as the quarterback of the future.
“I knew we had a good football team then,” Haskell said. “I knew we did. The only thing I thought was that somebody was going to get this team before we went to a Super Bowl. And I would’ve been really (ticked) because we put it all in place.
“If he would’ve gotten fired, somebody would have walked in and gotten a great football team.”
Holmgren stuck around and helped build that young team into a Super Bowl contender. After a 2004 season that saw the Seahawks finish 9-7 but fall short of the nation’s Super Bowl expectations, Holmgren was so distraught that he considered, for the first time in his life, giving up. He soldiered on, eventually helping the Seahawks break their playoff curse and go to the first Super Bowl in franchise history.
That 2005 season will be remembered as the finest in Holmgren’s tenure. But it was not his only highlight with Seattle.
He’ll leave the franchise as the all-time leader in wins (89) and has taken the Seahawks to more postseason appearances (six) and division titles (five) than the team had before he arrived. He is the only coach in NFL history to win 75 or more games with two different franchises.
“He’s definitely earned the city’s respect, with the amount of things he’s done with the Seahawks,” defensive back Jordan Babineaux said. “He helped rebuild the Seahawks into what we’ve been for the last couple of years.”
Until this season, what the Seahawks had become was winners. While Holmgren never got the Seahawks a Super Bowl trophy, he has lived up to the expectations.
“I know what it was like when I first got here,” said Hasselbeck, who will not play in today’s game against the New York Jets because of a back injury. “He turned the franchise around. He made this team into a winner again and restored Seahawk pride again. That was important for our town.”
And today, Holmgren could be coaching in this town for the final time.
“I wish it had more meaning in terms of the (playoff race),” wide receiver Bobby Engram said. “But to be a part of Coach’s last game here, for what he’s meant to this league and to this organization, it’s going to be a special day.”
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