When the Seahawks announced on Saturday that former G.M. and coach Mike Holmgren won’t return to the franchise, the team said that Holmgren “declined our offer . . . given the structure we proposed.”
A league source tells us that the structure was simple -- Holmgren would have occupied a position above G.M. and coach, like Bill Parcells in Miami.
However, unlike Parcells, Holmgren wouldn’t have been running the show.
On paper, Dolphins G.M. Jeff Ireland has “final say” over the roster, but anyone with any common sense (and some with not much of it, like me) knows that Parcells still calls the shots. In Seattle, however, the G.M. would have truly had the last word on all personnel decisions.
We’re also told that the Seahawks offered Holmgren significantly less money than the Browns have put on the table.
The decision to make Holmgren an offer he wouldn’t accept traces, we’re told, to man named Bert Kolde. Though Kolde’s name appears nowhere on a lengthy online list of Seahawks management and staff, Kolde serves as owner Paul Allen’s right-hand man. As pointed out in this Business Week article from 2004, the two former college roommates still get together for regular games of chess.
Per the source, Kolde and Holmgren had their own chess match during Holmgren’s prior ten years with the team, with Holmgren eventually saying, “How ‘bout I take your little board and smash it?”
More specifically, we’re told that Kolde used to poke around the team from time to time, and that Holmgren eventually told him to get the hell out.
And so while everyone put on their happy face when the announcement came that Holmgren won’t be coming back, the truth is a little darker than that. As pointed out in today’s Seattle Times, the team is now characterizing its offer a certain way, and Holmgren is saying on the record that the things the Seahawks are saying aren’t true.
So it looks like Holmgren definitely will be landing in Cleveland.
We can only hope that Jim Brown doesn’t call the Ukraine weak.