[img_r]http://cdntn.madison.com/images/articles/wsj/2008/10/11/87764.jpg[/img_r]SEATTLE -- When he came to the Green Bay Packers in 1992, he was the it young head-coaching candidate, a 44-year-old hotshot assistant from NFL's version of royalty, the San Francisco 49ers. He had four young daughters, all of his hair, and a newfangled West Coast offense foreign to folks in the Midwest.

"I think people were skeptical. But I think that's generally (true) of anything (in the) Midwest," Mike Holmgren recalled, thinking back to his introduction as the 11th coach in the history of the once-storied franchise, which had managed just four winning seasons in the previous 22 years.

"That first press conference there, I do remember that. There was the feeling that I left my surf board at home, and, Who is the young guy?' "

Now, he is a 60-year-old bespectacled grandfather of six, coaching what could be his final season in the NFL. The second-oldest active coach (behind the New York Giants' Tom Coughlin) in the NFL, Holmgren has been with his current team, the Seattle Seahawks, for 10 years now -- longer than his seven-year stay in Green Bay, where he, general manager Ron Wolf and quarterback Brett Favre helped put the title back in Titletown.

"I have six grandkids. Gretchen had a little baby boy, Michael," Holmgren said last week, referring to his youngest daughter, who was 10 years old when he came to Green Bay. "Now I finally have two little guys that I can play catch with when I'm at the nursing home."

Sunday, at Qwest Field, Holmgren's present and past collide, perhaps for the final time. He and his wife, Kathy, determined in the offseason that 2008 would be his final year as the Seahawks' coach -- and perhaps his last year coaching, period -- before taking what he calls "a sabbatical" from the profession.

"We're going to take some time and do some of the things we haven't been able to do as a couple. We've been married 38 years, and she's been a remarkable coach's wife," Holmgren said. "I think she worries about my health. She'd like to see me a little bit more on holidays -- Christmas and so on. The normal family stuff.

"I wish I could tell you how I'm going to react to this after having done it so long and not taking a break for so many years. But I don't know. I'm going to be open. Who knows? After one year, who knows? I'm going to be open to any number of things. We'll see."

Which makes this the perfect time to ask: When you think of Mike Holmgren, how do you feel?

A difficult departure
[ul]Wisconsinites tend to be incredibly provincial about sporting heroes. So it is that opinions differ on Holmgren, the only Packers coach other than Vince Lombardi to lead the franchise to the Super Bowl. Does he remain iconic? Or is he a traitor, who left for a better gig in the Pacific Northwest?

"My time in Green Bay was special," Holmgren said, "but this is where we are. And how other people view me kind of depends probably where they grew up, too."

Or how they view his departure. After back-to-back Super Bowl berths, his decision to leave after the 1998 season to become the Seahawks' coach and general manager wasn't unexpected. There had been talk at Super Bowl XXXII that Seahawks owner Paul Allen wanted Holmgren, and when a deal wasn't struck, he wound up back in Green Bay for one final, awkward season, lowlighted by a halftime confrontation with a Lambeau Field fan and an end-of-an-era playoff loss to the 49ers in the NFC wild card round.

"I think my own ego gets involved with the GM thing," Holmgren admitted when asked if a front-office job might follow his 2009 sabbatical. "But with my personality, and my wiring, the challenge (was) one of the reasons we came to Seattle. I made some errors, and I wish I'd had more time, and all that kind of stuff. But it's something that, I think I would be better the next time around. I wouldn't make the same mistakes over again.

"I think about that. But that is very much my own ego. I don't know, I've never been off the field. I've always been on the field. So to have a job that wasn't on the field, I don't know."

Holmgren has said that had he known Wolf would retire in 2001, he might have stayed, waiting to assume the dual role Mike Sherman inherited instead. But he did leave, and folks in Seattle credit him for rescuing their downtrodden franchise by teaching it how to win, leading the team to its only Super Bowl appearance during the 2005 season.

Of course, you could argue he did the same for the Packers. On the Packers' version of Mount Rushmore, his face -- and bushy mustache -- would be worthy of consideration, along with those of Lambeau, Lombardi, Favre, Wolf and Reggie White.

"He is an outstanding football coach," Packers coach Mike McCarthy said. "He is always someone I have looked at over all my years in the league. I have great respect for coach Holmgren."[/ul]

Struggling to start
[ul]Holmgren enters today's game, though, coming off the worst loss of his 17-year career as an NFL head coach, a 44-6 drubbing at the hands of the New York Giants last Sunday. The loss dropped the Seahawks to 1-3 on the season -- not what he had in mind for his final year.

"Well, no, I'd hoped we'd get off to a better start, that's for sure," Holmgren admitted. "Not just because it was my final year, but because that's how I always would like to start the season. We didn't play very well last Sunday, and that was disappointing to me. But in other ways, this team has handled adversity pretty well. So in some ways, I (am) very proud of the football team.

"Now, I'm still kind of cranky for how we played last Sunday. But it's a long season, and I'm always optimistic on how the final outcome will be. So we'll keep plugging away."

Asked if playing the Packers Sunday takes on any special meaning, Holmgren said no. "The game is special because we've got to get going here. That's what makes this game special. I always felt a little bit more emotional about the game -- I couldn't explain why necessarily -- when we traveled and played them back there. Then the memories (come back). You drive down the street or see a restaurant or do something. The game here in Seattle is more of another football game than when we went back there."

He's 2-4 (0-2 in the playoffs) coaching the Seahawks against the Packers, including last January's 42-20 NFC divisional loss at Lambeau Field. His only victories came in 1999, in his first trip back to Green Bay, and on a snowy Monday night in Seattle two years ago.[/ul]

Kinder, gentler?
[ul]Holmgren claims to have mellowed from his days in Green Bay, and Seahawks Pro Bowl quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, a former Packers backup who spent his rookie year of 1998 on the practice squad under Holmgren, agrees -- to a point.

"Mike got up (on Wednesday) and really laid into the offense. I mean, he gave it to us hard," Hasselbeck said. "(But) he's definitely got a better control of his temper these days. Maybe it's (because) the guys he's dealing with here are a little more responsible or a little less wild on and off the field (than the Packers were). But he's definitely got a little bit of a different personality that way.

"I think he's got a better handle on his emotions. But at the same time, he's still the same presence that you guys remember in Green Bay. When he's in a room, everybody knows where he is. When he talks, everyone listens. And he's got a lot of experience and a lot of wisdom and he's a very good football coach."

Which, no matter how you feel about him now, is difficult to dispute. Holmgren is a good bet to be enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame someday.[/ul]

Back to beginning
[ul]Six NFL head-coaching jobs were open in 1992, and he made the rounds before ending up in Green Bay.

"I interviewed at six places. It's hard to believe. I'm not exactly sure, now, why I did that," Holmgren replied when asked why he chose Green Bay. "As long as they wanted to talk to me, absolutely I was going to go talk to them.

"(But) to answer your question, there was something about me that I've learned about myself, about the challenge of building something up. It gets me going a little bit. They had been down for a while, and that was appealing to me. I didn't think about how cold it was going to be, I didn't think about much, really. I really thought the world of Ron Wolf, who interviewed me and who was going to be my boss. And of Bob Harlan, who was the president. So I really liked the people there.

"Call it ego, cockiness, whatever -- you always think you can go in and fix anything. I really had no idea the difficulty of something like that. But I didn't really care, I was going to get a chance to be head coach, and everything was good.

"As an assistant coach, you sit in those meetings and you listen to your head coach talk about stuff, and you say, 'I could do that. I'm doing all the work. What's he doing, I could do this.' Then you finally get to be (one), and it's like Robert Redford in that movie 'The Candidate'. He finally gets elected in the end, and he sits in the room by himself and he goes, Now what do I do?' But I had good foundation with the 49ers and I had a good, healthy system to bring in there. And then Ron Wolf was tremendous.

"Our time there was great, it really was. It was a very unique place. It's small, a wonderful atmosphere to coach in. Looking back on it, as I think about the other teams I talked to, it really was the absolute best decision I ever made."[/ul]