Mike Holmgren

Mike Holmgren
Michael George Holmgrenis a former American football coach and executive, most recently serving as president of the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League. Holmgren began his NFL career as a quarterbacks' coach and later as an offensive coordinator with the San Francisco 49ers, where they won Super Bowl XXIII and XXIV. He served as the head coach of the Green Bay Packers from 1992 to 1998, appearing in two Super Bowls, and of the Seattle Seahawks from 1999 to...
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth15 June 1948
CitySan Francisco, CA
This happened every year I've coached in this game. By Thursday or Friday they get a little cranky and stuff happens.
I talk about that a lot. I think if you asked one of my players, they'd probably tell you I kill them with that stuff. Just being careful. It's the last thing I told them Sunday night after we broke from the stadium after the game. After this incident, it gave me another opportunity because they were listening. I mean for the guys who kind of tuned me out before, now I had everybody listening and we talked about it, which, I think, is my responsibility as a coach. You know these guys are my family, and it would be like talking to your own kids, you don't want bad things to happen to them so let's try to help them a little bit.
I think the world of him and I think he is a really good football player. I set the bar very high for him. Anytime he falls short of that, fair or not fair, I will talk to him about it. He is a wonderful guy ... and he wants to do well. To go with his physical ability, all the things you have to do to be a great player, it should happen for him.
It happens, because now you're down to one game, and anything can happen in any one game. But I think if you look over percentages over the last however many years, most of the times the guys that are playing at home have the advantage. So we're choosing to look at it that way.
It was a sad thing what happened to Kenny. The good part is that he has healed up. What his football future is, I can't tell you right now. I'm somewhat optimistic about it. He will be there with us Sunday. He has had an emotional impact on this football team before he was hurt and certainly after the injury. My hope and prayer is that he will be able to continue playing football next year.
As I've told the team, ultimately you'll be judged by what happens and where you are at the end of the season. I understand why we are the underdogs, and there's really only one way to handle that. That's not by talking, it's by playing the game and seeing what happens.
That happens on occasion. You'll get a team signing somebody that skews, that's like Alex Rodriguez signing with Texas.
It really is a team in the truest sense of the word. The sum of the parts is greater than the individual parts. This team is fairly unknown to most of the country.
As soon as they make some arrangements, he'll know and I'll know. We have to see. That's the first thing.
Steve Smith, for his size, is very, very strong -- physically a strong guy, has strong hands.
I said I was going to leave it up to him, but I have to pull rank. He's going upstairs.
At the league level -- and I sit on the committees that talk about this stuff -- they want to do everything that they can for the safety of the player, ... In warm weather, we really talk about it a lot.
The thing that bothers me as much as anything else was the penalties. You can't overcome those things.
That was very distasteful to me, to retaliate so to speak like that (against the Vikings). I do believe the commissioner should look into these kind of clauses. We work so hard on trying to gain labor peace and a new collective bargaining agreement and then we as clubs allow agents to get cute and circumvent it. On the playing field there are rules and there are unwritten rules about how the game should be played in the spirit and the fairness of it all. It doesn't make sense to me that we had to lose such a fine football player this way. I was surprised by the ruling.