Amid multiple reports that former Packers and Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren is meeting with the Browns, Chris Mortensen of ESPN offers up a nugget that could, as a practical matter, limit Holmgren’s options.
Per Mort, Holmgren “hopes to have his future clarified and secured by Christmas.”
Christmas, as my son reminded me this morning, is ten days away.
So with the only current G.M. vacancies in Cleveland and Seattle and the only open coaching job in Buffalo, there aren’t many places where the Big Show will raise the curtain.
Since he’s leaning toward a front-office job, the primary options are the Browns and the Seahawks. Though there’s a current vibe that the Seahawks might not really want Holmgren back, Cleveland owner Randy Lerner is likely poised to do whatever it takes to get him.
Our guess, then, is that Mort’s report contains a message to Lerner: The window is open, and in ten days it’ll close.
Mort also says that, if Holmgren takes the job in Cleveland, coach Eric Mangini would instantly occupy a position of “considerable jeopardy.”
In other words, Mangini could end up being the first head coach to be dumped in consecutive years since Ray Rhodes, who was fired by the Eagles after the 1998 season and by the Packers, where he succeeded Holmgren, after the 1999 season.
UPDATE: Some of you have pointed out that Holmgren’s deadline and flirtation with Cleveland could be a message to the Seahawks to, as a version of the saying goes, crap or get off the crapper. With the Seahawks’ search firm lining up potential interviews that won’t occur until after the regular season ends, Holmgren’s potential message to the team will be met with a shrug of the shoulders.