Mike Holmgren explains why he left Green Bay for Seattle, on way to Seahawks Ring of Honor
Mike Holmgren already was a Super Bowl-winning coach. For that, he already was a legend — with the most legendary franchise in the NFL.
Heck, he already had a street named after him in Green Bay. Holmgren Way is just outside Lambeau Field.
“In Green Bay as an example, when the powers that be like the mayor and politicians said to me that they wanted to do this, I said no. But they said, ‘No, we want to do this,’” Holmgren said Friday.
“There is a corner in Green Bay, which is the corner of Holmgren and Lombardi. How cool is that?”
Way, Holmgren Way, cool.
So why in the name of that one and only Vince Lombardi did Holmgren choose to leave the Packers in 1999 and come to Seattle?
Then, Seattle was known as the NFL’s outpost in “South Alaska.’ That’s what Jimmy Johnson once called where the middling Seahawks played, way up and out here.
The Seahawks weren’t exactly the Green Bay Packers.
“On the surface, in a league where coaches lose their position rather quickly, it didn’t make much sense to everyone else,” Holmgren said Friday via a Zoom interview online from his home on Seattle’s Eastside.
“There were a couple of things. One, Seattle had offered me a position of running the whole program. That was different than in Green Bay, although I was fortunate to have (iconic general manager) Ron Wolf with me in Green Bay and that was a perfect combination.”
The Seahawks gave “The Big Show,” as his players called the 6-foot-5 coach, their whole show in Seattle. They gave Holmgren an eight-year contract. They gave him the titles and authority: executive vice president, general manager and coach of the Seahawks.
It was similar to the top football authority Pete Carroll now has with the Seahawks. Carroll is executive vice president of football operations and coach. General manager John Schneider is below Carroll in authority and rank.
“Not unlike Pete and John now with the Seahawks,” said Holmgren, a Bay Area native who went to high school in San Francisco.
“The other thing was being on the West Coast and being closer to all of my family. That was another thing,
“The third thing was, and I’ll be honest: in Green Bay, people ask about the pressure of coaching in the NFL, and I have to say that kind of pressure never bothered me. What I did think about there in Wisconsin — you guys know how rabid the Seahawks fans are — the head coach of the Packers really is responsible for the mood of the entire state.”
That proved to be less appealing to Holmgren as his kids grew, his wife’s medical career grew and his appreciation of work-life balance grew while he and the Packers won in Green Bay.
“Sometimes, football is important, but it should be fun,” he said. “My daughter (Calla) is a doctor and saves lives, so it’s not like that. To them, the folks there, it was important, and I felt that. That burden hit me sometimes if we would lose a game — and we didn’t lose too many, it was a good run.
“As an example, my wife (Kathy) is a social worker. On the Monday after we would lose there was a spike in spousal abuse (in Wisconsin).
“It was just crazy. That was another reason. I think I wanted to get a change in that dynamic a little bit from how my mind was working towards this job.”
He found that, and so much more, in Seattle.
On Sunday at Lumen Field, the house in SoDo that Holmgren built, the Seahawks will make Holmgren the 14th member of the franchise’s Ring of Honor.
Holmgren is now 73 and a grandfather. He and his family are firmly rooted in the Seattle area. He will drive across Lake Washington from his waterside home Sunday to be enshrined during a ceremony at halftime of the game between the Seahawks (2-5) and Jacksonville Jaguars (1-5).
“Obviously, it means a whole lot,” Holmgren said. “Our time in Seattle, as a family and my time as a football coach, it’s been special. To be able to see my name up there, honestly, it’s pretty cool.
“It’s quite an honor. I’m humbled by it. And it’s going to be a good day for me and my family.”
Holmgren-Hasselbeck bonded
Holmgren broke a 10-year playoff drought in Seattle his first season running the Seahawks. He won the AFC West in 1999, an NFC wild-card playoff entry in 2003, then four consecutive NFC West titles from 2004-07. At the end of the 2005 season Holmgren led the Seahawks into their first Super Bowl.
He is getting honored and will have his name hung from the rafters of the stadium’s cantilevered roof six days after Matt Hasselbeck also joined the Ring of Honor.
Hasselbeck wasn’t invited to the NFL scouting combine. Only one coach came to his Pro Day at Boston College. Holmgren drafted him onto the Packers anyway. Then in 2002 Holmgren traded with his former Packers to bring Brett Favre’s backup in Green Bay to be his quarterback in Seattle before the coach’s third season leading the Seahawks.
Hasselbeck and Holmgren led Seattle to their first most successful run from 2001 through 2008. Holmgren retired from coaching following that ‘08 season with the Seahawks.
How much does Hasselbeck appreciate Holmgren’s unwavering faith in a backup quarterback to bring him to the Seahawks and turn him into a Super Bowl and three-time Pro Bowl quarterback?
Hasselbeck laughed at that.
“That unwavering faith is not how I would have termed it at different points of the journey,” Hasselbeck said last week.
To say Holmgren, the former USC quarterback and perfectionist who coached Joe Montana, Steve Young and Favre, drove Hasselbeck hard is like saying Hasselbeck can talk.
“In all seriousness, it is a huge, huge honor for me just even that Mike Holmgren is being inducted,” Hasselbeck said. “I take so much pride in that, because I know what he meant to my career. When he was in Green Bay coaching Brett Favre, it never felt like he was coaching me. I felt like he was coaching Brett and I was allowed to be there.
“But the valuable lessons that I learned while getting to watch Mike coach Brett Favre right after he had just got done coaching Joe Montana and Steve Young, they were different people and very different types of players, which was incredibly valuable to me.”
Hasselbeck said he quickly learned in his first seasons with the Seahawks, when they were playing in Husky Stadium at the University of Washington while Qwest Field (now Lumen Field) was getting built downtown, that it was no picnic to be Holmgren’s quarterback.
“I learned firsthand of what I saw, how hard it is to be coached by him,” Hasselbeck said. “The standard that he set was so high and such a challenge that when you get to game day, the opponent isn’t really the toughest part of your week. The toughest part of your week is the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday practice with Mike Holmgren when the football is literally not allowed to touch the ground.
“I’m just incredibly grateful that, number one, Mike Holmgren drafted me and went to such an incredible quarterback coach as a head coach and number two, that he then chose to trade for me when I hadn’t really done anything in the NFL. ...It meant a lot and to go through that journey with him where it wasn’t always easy, but we weathered the storms, stayed the course, and bought into his message, and we were able to do some special things and set a foundation for future success.
“The fact that he’s going in and I’m going in the same year where I know that could have easily been some other combination of some players and coaches. I’m very grateful.”
Holmgren is also grateful.
When he goes to Seahawks games now, sees all the 12 jerseys and flag-raising ceremony before each kickoff, knows the team has had tens of thousands of fans on a waiting list to buy season tickets, he smiles at those days playing games in half-empty Husky Stadium trying to build in Seattle what he had in Green Bay.
He did.
“There were a lot of different color jerseys in that stadium. I feel like other teams would buy tickets. You guys remember that,” Holmgren said. “Then all of a sudden, the idea (former Seahawks, now NHL’s Kraken CEO) Tod Leiweke brought in of the 12th Man kind of erupted. It was a fun, great place to be on Sunday. It was different. ...
“It was a unique place.”
Decades later, Carroll is trying to revive Seattle’s season and get the Seahawks back to the playoffs for the ninth time in 10 seasons in January.
It’s a legacy of excellence Holmgren created.
The one that got away
Meanwhile, Holmgren travels when he wants to, where he wants to. He and his wife Kathy, whom he met at age 12, just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. They have cabins in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California.
When they travel, Holmgren says people he doesn’t know come up to him at airports saying “You guys got screwed in that Super Bowl.”
That, of course, is Super Bowl 40, when Holmgren and the Seahawks lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers in Detroit. The game remains infamous in Seattle for a game marred by controversial calls from referee Bill Leavy and his officiating crew.
Had the Seahawks won that game — the Steelers won the sloppy game 21-10 — Holmgren might already be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame for becoming the first coach to win a Super Bowl with two franchises. Holmgren is one of six coaches to take two different teams to the Super Bowl. The others are Don Shula, Bill Parcells, Dick Vermeil, Dan Reeves and John Fox.
“Yeah, I felt that was a poorly officiated game,” Holmgren said Friday of Super Bowl 40. “The officials should never be the story line for the Super Bowl. That’s ridiculous, and it was. You didn’t have to be a Seahawks fan to see that.”
Turns out Leavy, the referee that day, refereed Holmgren’s games when he was the coach and a teacher at Oak Grove High School in San Jose from 1975-80.
“He was a cop in San Jose and refereed my high school games. Now he’s in the NFL, he’s got the Super Bowl. I’m going, ‘Oh he’s going to be good. I’m going to get anything. He might give me a little help here,’” Holmgren said.
Nope.
“He came out afterwards. He was the gentleman that came out afterwards, I think a couple years later, and said, ‘I messed up,’” Holmgren said. “Officials never say that, but he said, ‘I messed up.’”
This story was originally published October 30, 2021 at 11:39 AM.
