Former Seahawks and Packers coach Mike Holmgren is making no bones about his desire to get back into the game after only one year off.
Recently, Holmgren told the Washington Post that he’ll be back in 2010.
On Tuesday, Holmgren elaborated on those remarks during an interview with KJR radio in Seattle.
“I think I want to work again,” Holmgren said, via SportsRadioInterview.com. “Yeah, absolutely. We’re going to take the year off and then after next season is over, we’ll see. I plan to go back to work. Now, where and what capacity, that is really pretty vague. I don’t know. . . . I’m going to be open. I’m looking at the hires recently and they’re hiring young coaches for one thing, and I’m a little bit of a dinosaur. . . . I’m young at heart, I still think I’m 25, [so] I’m not gonna presume anything. . . . I am going to be open to just about any possibility. But I am pretty sure, yeah, that I’d like to go back to work after next year.”
He already realizes that he needs to be in the game.
“Absolutely,” he said as to whether he misses it. “I remember draft day, I was kind of getting involved in the draft, at least watching it on television. I really had to kind of check myself and say, ‘Listen, I don’t have to get all worked up like this anymore for this right now.’ . . . One of the purposes behind taking the year off though was to figure out one, how I would react to that . . . and then kind of decide after that talk about it and just see what the future held. . . . You do something for so long and enjoy it so much, I think that’s human nature that you’re going to miss it. Anybody that tells you that they don’t miss it I don’t think is being quite honest with you.”
We agree, completely. The same dynamic is pushing Brett Favre back into the game, in our view. It’s hard enough to walk away from something that you truly love. It’s even harder to watch that thing you love continue to thrive without you, as if you never even were part of it.
In Holmgren’s case, it sounds like he’s leaning toward a front-office role instead of coaching, even though he’s being noncommital for now. He said that being on the sidelines is a tremendous draw, but he recognized that he wasn’t bouncing back from a tough loss, and that it potentially was affecting the team.
He also seems to want to rectify the mistakes he made while running the Seahawks as G.M. and head coach.
“I had a little taste of running the team in Seattle for a few years,” Holmgren said. “I think I’ve been pretty honest and open about that. I made some mistakes, but we did some good things, too. And if I ever got a chance to do that again, I’d be better. I think I’d be wiser. I wouldn’t make the same mistakes, hopefully.”
He said that one of his regrets was making the front office transition too slowly, and that he wasn’t as decisive as he needed to be about bringing in his guys and getting rid of the holdovers that didn’t fit with his way of doing things.
So, basically, all potential future holdovers in every NFL city are on notice. If you fail to meet the expectations that your owners have set for you in 2009, you might be at the mercy of Mike Holmgren in 2010.