Seahawks fly
Sports injury preventionHawks fly: Holmgren’s ‘self-demotion’ appears to be paying off in a big way
The way the Seattle Seahawks have been playing this year they're looking like serious playoff contenders.
If you need to, you can set the paper down and step back to digest that for a moment. The Seahawks are off to their best start through seven games in franchise history with a record of 5-2. They haven’t started the first seven games of a season with a winning record since 1999, when they went 5-2.
Coach Mike Holmgren knows that his team is young and that they aren’t as accustomed to winning as some other teams might be. “Only four other teams in the history of the Seahawks have ever been here,” he said during a press conference. “So we have to learn how to win.”
Holmgren’s coaching career began Green Bay, where he coached the Packers. He spent seven full years as the Packers’ head coach, and they made the playoffs every year except for his first one. His Packers made it to two Super Bowls in a row, beating the New England Patriots in 1996 and losing to the Denver Broncos in 1997.
When Holmgren’s contract was up in Green Bay he decided to leave to find a team that needed rebuilding — one that was far worse than the Packers. He was looking for a team that would not only let him be the head coach, but also the general manager.
The Seahawks handed him the reigns to the team.
In his first year the Seahawks went 9-7 and made it to the playoffs for the first time in over a decade. They faced an early exit, as they lost to Dan Marino and the Miami Dolphins in the first round in what would be the last football game ever played at the Kingdome.
The loss wasn’t taken as a bad sign, however, as Holmgren and the players knew they had exceeded expectations, and Seahawks fans anticipated the next year.
Holmgren’s next three years as the coach didn’t go off as well as he, or anybody else, would have hoped. The Seahawks stumbled out of the gates early in those three seasons and never were a serious threat to any playoff-contending teams. Some said that working as both the general manager and head coach was causing a conflict of interests for Holmgren and that the stress level was high enough with just one position, much less two.
At the end of the 2002 season Holmgren decided to step down as general manager and let somebody else take care of the front-office duty while he stayed on the field and coached.
The decision worked.
The Seahawks are now being billed on the national television shows as a legitimate threat and a serious playoff-contending team. The fans are becoming believers as well, as Seahawks Stadium is averaging more than 62,000 fans per Seahawks home game. While they hope to continue their winning ways the Seahawks could begin to replace their baseball rivals, the Mariners, as the talk of the town.
Despite their record, the Seahawks have had a penchant for coming from behind to ensure victory at the last moment. Against the St. Louis Rams earlier in the year they were losing 23-10 in the fourth quarter, but they came back to win the game by one point, 24-23. Just two weeks later, against San Francisco, the Seahawks held the lead going into the fourth quarter, but the 49ers caught up and took the lead by two points. But, just as against St. Louis, the Seahawks won again in the fourth quarter, coming from behind to snatch the victory with a field goal in the last few minutes of the game. And in the game against Chicago, the Seahawks took an early lead only to lose it as the Bears tied the game at 17 in the fourth quarter. But the story remained the same – the Seahawks won with a touchdown with only 58 seconds left on the clock.
The game against the Cincinnati Bengals, however, was the only game in which the come-from-behind system didn’t work. The Seahawks threatened in the fourth quarter, but their attempts failed as the Bengals’ defense proved to be too strong. In the end, the Seahawks were forced into making poor turnovers and losing only their second game of the season.
“I don’t want to be down as the ‘Cardiac Kids,’” said Holmgren, “but it’s OK to win. I want to win the game any way we can at the end.”
Holmgren thinks the close games help Seahawks Stadium continue to be full week after week. “If we win at home and it’s an exciting, close game and leaves the fans kind of breathless, that’s probably a pretty good deal. Maybe they will want to come back and see another one … It’s nice to see the stadium full.”