Posted: Thursday, December 25, 2008 12:00 am
RENTON, Wash. (AP) - Sure, he chats with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. He advised Redskins owner Daniel Snyder on hiring his last head coach.
But Mike Holmgren sent a clear message Wednesday to them, and to any other NFL team that might come fishing next year to see if the exiting Seahawks coach will bite during his sabbatical from football: Let me be.
"I'm human, so I read the papers and I know what's going on in the league. I should. It's been my life for a long time. But I can honestly say I'm not going into this that way,'' Holmgren said four days before the final game of his 10-year run in Seattle.
The 60-year-old Holmgren is choosing to leave the league, which he has been in since former San Francisco coach Bill Walsh hired him as an assistant in 1986, after his Seattle contract ends on Sunday because he has been promising his wife Kathy for years he would step away.
Two weeks ago, he reiterated he was pretty sure he wouldn't be back anywhere else next year, but he did not completely rule it out.
Wednesday, he was clear.
"Two things: I want to see how I'm going to react to not working and my life being different. That's the first thing,'' Holmgren said. "Then after that - which will be way down the road - there will be time to think about that. I'm not going to say, 'Gee I missed an opportunity there, because here it's going to happen this year and it should have happened next year -.' I don't want to get into that.
"The beauty of this thing is I don't have to do that anymore.''
Sunday night, Sports Illustrated reporter Peter King said on NBC's NFL pregame's show that Holmgren will be in high demand around the league in 2009, but that short of his hometown 49ers giving him full control, King thought Holmgren will be out of the league next year.
"Will you be our head coach, will you be our general manager, will you be our ticket seller? It doesn't matter, everybody wants Mike Holmgren," King said on NBC. "I think Dan Snyder may call him in Washington to have a role in their organization. And I believe that Jerry Jones will call him in Dallas."
Holmgren knows there will probably be more where that came from.
"You can't ever stop anyone from saying or writing, as you well know, anything they want to write or say,'' Holmgren said. "I'm telling you what I'm going to do: I'm going to take some time off and not think about this for a while. And I think that's in fairness to everybody. I think that way if ever I get a chance to make another decision, perhaps, at least I will have given it a suitable time of rest and clearing my mind so you can attempt to make a decent decision, you know?
"And that's what I'm going to do. -. All right?"
All right.
NO HASSELBECK: Matt Hasselbeck watched practice wearing a ski cap after Holmgren confirmed his starting quarterback will miss his ninth and final game of the season on Sunday at Arizona. The bulging disk in Hasselbeck's back is still weakening the 33-year-old too much to pass doctors' tests.
Seneca Wallace will make his eighth start of the season. Hasselbeck will be inactive, in uniform only as the emergency third quarterback.
Holmgren traded with his former Packers to bring Hasselbeck to Seattle in 2001 and make him the Seahawks' starter. So is it sad for the coach that Hasselbeck won't get to play in his final game?
"I think we crossed that bridge a long time ago,'' Holmgren said.
Hasselbeck has been out for all but three games since Oct. 5.
"I talked to him and we had a good talk. And the important thing is that he's going to be fine,'' the coach said. "And next year, he should be (fine)."
Doctors have told Hasselbeck if nothing happened to his back he would be healed by Valentine's Day and would not need surgery.