Seahawks, Packers, many NFLers asking: Why wasn’t Mike Holmgren voted into Hall of Fame?
“The Big Show” remains off football’s biggest stage.
Seahawks and Packers Super Bowl coach Mike Holmgren was a finalist for the sports highest individual honor, but did not receive enough votes for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame Thursday. The 76-year-old Holmgren fell short of the 80% of votes from a 50-person panel needed for enshrinement in Canton, Ohio, this summer.
The NFL and Hall of Fame announced the selection committee’s vote Thursday from Super Bowl week festivities in New Orleans. Holmgren was the only former coach in a pool of five finalists among senior players and contributors. The only one of those five who got the required percentage of votes for induction was Sterling Sharpe, Holmgren’s former star wide receiver with Green Bay.
Three from the modern-era player list of 15 finalists also made the Class of 2025: Eric Allen, Jared Allen and Antonio Gates.
The class of four is the Hall of Fame’s smallest since 2005. This is the 19th time since 1970 the incoming class has only four or three in it.
Holmgren’s chances for induction seemingly worsen next year. Legend Bill Belichick will become eligible as a coach inductee for the first time in 2026.
Holmgren remade the Seahawks’ previously middling franchise. He taught it how to win championships. He got Seattle to its first Super Bowl as its coach from 1999 to 2008.
Holmgren remained characteristically classy Friday speaking on KJR radio.
“If I didn’t say I was disappointed I wouldn’t be truthful,” Holmgren told morning hosts Chuck Powell and Bucky Jacobson.
“We’re OK,” he said of his particularly disappointed wife and grown children. “We’ll be OK.
“My number one thing...,” Holmgren said, pausing to contain his emotions, “was to earn the respect of the guys I coached against.”
The Hall-of-Fame selection committee consists of one media representative from each pro football city, plus an additional one from New York and Los Angeles. There can be up to 17 at-large selectors, who are active members of the media or persons intricately involved in professional football, plus one representative of the Pro Football Writers of America.
Former News Tribune Seahawks and NFL writer Mike Sando, now of The Athletic, is on the selection committee.
After the vote, Sando explained on social media from New Orleans: “I think we are seeing that a strong player (Sharpe) beats a strong or even stronger coach (Holmgren) when voters must choose. This is why coaches & contributors were separated from modern-era players initially—to help their chances. But by combining them with players (even senior players in this case) and then requiring 80% of votes AND that voters must pick three, here we are.”
Or, as one of his former understudies who eventually replaced him as the Packers’ head coach told The News Tribune Friday: Holmgren just doesn’t lobby for getting into the Hall, as others have.
Many around the NFL disagree
Many across the league continue to view Holmgren’s induction as overdue.
The man who got his first NFL coaching job from Holmgren, who became his Seahawks offensive coordinator in 1999, who then succeeded Holmgren as Green Bay’s head coach, was shocked his mentor didn’t get in.
“Just thought it was a no-brainer,” Mike Sherman told the TNT Friday from his home on Cape Cod in Massachusetts on KJR radio. “I actually was making preparations with my son, who now still lives in Green Bay and works in Green Bay, to go to the Hall of Fame event (this summer).
“I didn’t find out until this morning. I didn’t even bother looking last night. Because I didn’t think it was possible that a guy that took two separate teams, two separate quarterbacks, to the Super Bowl (wouldn’t get in).
“I know he’s a unique individual. I know he didn’t politick for this Hall of Fame induction,” Sherman said.
“But hopefully next year — I know it gets tougher and tougher — but he is certainly well-deserving.”
Now 70 and out of football, retired since the end of 2018, Sherman still appreciates the lessons Holmgren imparted to him.
“He gave me an opportunity and really taught me a lot, not just about football, but about family and about life, in general — and about maintaining a sense of humor,” Sherman said. “I don’t know anybody that makes me laugh more than Mike Holmgren, to be honest with you.
“Then, there were times when Mount Vesuvius came out of him, too.”
Thursday’s voting results mean left guard Steve Hutchinson (Class of 2020), safety Kenny Easley (2017), left tackle Walter Jones (2014), defensive lineman Cortez Kennedy (Class of 2012) and wide receiver Steve Largent (1995) remain Seattle’s Hall of Fame inductees who played the majority of their NFL careers for the Seahawks.
Jones can’t see why Holmgren isn’t joining them as Seahawks in Canton.
“He did it the right way,” Jones said told host Ian Furness on the Kraken Hockey Network’s telecast of the NHL game at Climate Pledge Arena Wednesday night.
“For me, personally, he’s my Hall-of-Fame coach, because he came here and he changed the standard here in Seattle. When I came here he was, like, ‘Hey, listen to me, we’ll get y’all to a Super Bowl.’”
Mike Holmgren’s path
A former history teacher and football coach at his alma mater Lincoln High School in his native San Francisco, Holmgren compares favorably to those coaches already in Canton.
Holmgren’s accomplishments, impact on football and development of assistants who went on to huge NFL success — Andy Reid will try to win an unprecedented third consecutive Super Bowl as Kansas City’s head coach on Sunday — have him at least on par with fellow Super Bowl-winning coaches who are in the Hall. Those include Tony Dungy, Bill Cowher and Dick Vermeil. Dungy was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2016, Cowher in 2020 and Vermeil in 2022.
If he was among the 24 coaches who are in the Hall, Holmgren would have the eighth-best winning percentage. As Hugh Millen pointed out Friday on KJR, Holmgren would be fourth among Hall-of-Fame coaches in number of seasons making the playoffs. He’d be third in games coached in the postseason. He’d be fifth in playoff games won, sixth in conference championships and third in average finish in his division each season.
Seven coaches have led two different teams to a Super Bowl. Five of those seven coaches won at least one Super Bowl. Only Holmgren and Reid, his former assistant with the Packers, aren’t in the Hall of Fame. Reid is not yet eligible to be.
But it’s more than the numbers and the proteges.
The Hall of Fame players he coached think Holmgren belongs, too.
Holmgren won consecutive Super Bowls in the late 1980s as the offensive coordinator coaching Hall-of-Fame quarterbacks Joe Montana and Steve Young for the 49ers.
“Mike Holmgren is one of the greatest coaches in NFL history,” Montana told the Seahawks’ online-publication team, “who belongs in the Hall of Fame.”
That success with the 49ers, plus Holmgren’s experience coaching passing offense in college at Brigham Young, led the Green Bay Packers to hire him in 1992 to be a head coach for the first time in his football life. Five seasons later, he won the Super Bowl. He coached Hall-of-Fame QB Brett Favre and those Packers to their first NFL championship since 1968 under Vince Lombardi.
Holmgren led the Packers back to the Super Bowl the following, 1997 season. They lost to John Elway and the heavy-underdog Denver Broncos.
“You can be a great offensive coordinator. You can be a great head coach. Not many people can do both,” Young told the Seahawks recently.
“He belongs in the Hall of Fame.”
He’s so revered in Green Bay for his success with the Packers the city street outside their home stadium, Lambeau Field, is named Holmgren Way.
“I know without a doubt I would not be where I am today without him,” Favre told the Seahawks recently about Holmgren. “The three MVPs that I was fortunate to win are a direct result of his coaching and leadership.”
On Jan. 8, 1999, late Seahawks owner Paul Allen lured Holmgren from Green Bay by giving him the titles — and pay — of Seattle’s executive vice president of football operations, general manager and head coach. It was an eight-year contract for what was believed to be more than $4 million annually, by far the NFL’s highest salary for a coach at the time.
The 1999 Seahawks were coming off four straight years of 8-8 or 7-9 seasons, finishing in third or four place in their division each of those years under coach Dennis Erickson.
They had won just one division title in 23 years.
Holmgren won the division in his first Seahawks season, with Tacoma native Jon Kitna at quarterback.
Finding Matt Hasselbeck
After the 2000 season, Holmgren the Seahawks GM/coach traded with his former Packers to get his new quarterback. Matt Hasselbeck was at the time Favre’s deep backup on the Packers.
Three years earlier, Holmgren had sent his assistant Reid to find Hasselbeck out of Boston College. Holmgren’s Packers then shocked many, including Hasselbeck, by drafting him in the sixth round in 1998.
Holmgren shocked all again in 2000 when he traded with the Packers to get Hasselbeck for his Seahawks.
“I was a fourth-string guy,” Hasselbeck said Thursday on KJR radio, “and kind of a nobody.”
Holmgren taught and coached that “nobody” into a three-time Pro Bowl quarterback. Hasselbeck started Seattle’s first Super Bowl, at the end of the 2005 season.
“He’s an incredible teacher,” Hasselbeck said.
“He’s also a great developer. ...While he was teaching his offense and coaching Brett Favre, he was developing guys like me on the bench. And that’s how you have a sustained program, with sustained success.
“And then I think the third part of it is: Motivating and pushing players further than they think than they ever thought they could have been pushed.”
Hasselbeck said Holmgren had a rule at practice for quarterbacks: The ball never hits the ground.
“When I first heard that, it was like, ‘That’s ridiculous.’ Like, that’s an easy rule to make. It’s impossible to do,” Hasselbeck said. “Like, ‘What are you even talking about?’
“I think if you asked all the guys that got coached by Mike Holmgren, they would all say the same thing. I’m saying he pushed me further than I ever even knew that I could be pushed myself.”
Holmgren drafted Hutchinson to play next on Seattle’s offensive line next to Jones. He drafted running back Shaun Alexander from Alabama. Alexander became the NFL’s Most Valuable Player in Holmgren’s Seahawks offense. His Seattle defenses had John Randle, Chad Brown, Tacoma’s Marcus Trufant, Ken Hamlin and Pro Bowl middle linebacker Lofa Tatupu.
Holmgren won five division titles in nine seasons with the Seahawks. In his 10 seasons as coach, Seattle made the playoffs six times and had three 10-win seasons.
In the 23 years before Holmgren arrived, the Seahawks went to the postseason just four times.
“He changed the culture here in Seattle,” Jones said. “Everyone got used to winning.
“Now, you can see that now.”
This story was originally published February 7, 2025 at 3:44 PM.
