http://m.espn.go.com/nfl/story?storyId=8511711

After guiding Browns to 2nd worst record in NFL and the sale of the franchise, he's hanging it up.

Scale of 1-10 how much did you like his stay in Seattle?

What the heck happened in Cleveland?

Love Holmgren. Love what he did while he was here.

I think Holmgren's a great coach, not a great personnel guy. He's tried a couple times now and it's ended unfavorably both times. It's too bad. Would love to see him come back and raise the 12th Man Flag sometime!!

I liked his stay in Seattle about an 8.5. Love that he took us to the playoffs 6 times...did not like that we never won a SB [refs notwithstanding].

I never understood why he went to Cleveland, I always thought that was a terrible move. Holmgren's strength is as a coach/teacher, not a front office guy. That whole thing was a disaster. Somehow they are probably worse now than when he arrived.

he brought us to a Superbowl and created a great team. I give him a Ten .

he is getting thrown outta Cleveland but its probably time to retire. plus being soft is not cool

Thought he set us back a few years when he got here, but he got us there in the end so I'll have positive memories of him too. Overall, I'd give him a 7. By comparison, I'd give Knox a 7, Ericksen and Patera 6.5's everyone besides PC get 3 or less. PC to date is earning an 8.5

Holmgren did things his way and it worked.

Until his players started to get old and he wouldn't inject new blood into the equation. (Ruskell being a mitigating factor here.)

I was never a big Holmgren fan, but I'll have to admit to loving to Super Bowl run. I may not have liked him, but he gave me that, for which I will be forever grateful.

Pretty simple. Good coach, poor GM/President. I've always been of the opinion that if we had Holmgren and a real GM like Ron Wolf or John Schneider from the get go, we'd have had a dominant team for years.

Nothing but love for Big Salmon. That will be a special day when he comes back to raise the flag.

This would never be a point of discussion if we'd have had Holmgren & Schneider instead of who we did. And Carroll at the time as DC.

Got to give him a 9.9 as he took us to our first SB, we dominated the west for many years.

As a coach? 10 out of 10.

As a GM? 5 out of 10 (he hit on some players, missed on a bunch)

And no one wins in Cleveland. That franchise is a disaster. I think Holmgren is likely done now.. don't think his heart is in coaching anymore, otherwise I could see him wind up in San Diego and have immediate success.

Seahawk Sailor wrote:This would never be a point of discussion if we'd have had Holmgren & Schneider instead of who we did. And Carroll at the time as DC.

Holmgren's ego and Carroll's ego would never in a million years co-exist. And there's no way Pete would have left a HC job at USC where he had it completely made, sanctions or not, to be a DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR in the NFL.

I do agree that if Holmgren had Schneider as GM, he'd be much better off than with Ruskell (the real reason this franchise was set so far back pre PC/JS).. but the idea Holmgren and Carroll would come together and team up is very laughable.

While there are many who hail Holmgren as some sort of coaching messiah, I just don't agree. His team in Green Bay went to the Super Bowl due to remarkably good personnel decisions. Jim Mora could have won a Super Bowl with that squad.

In our years of dominance, we had loads of talent who never fully panned out. The result was a locker room full of divas and malcontents, and Holmgren never bothered to rein it in. In my opinion, the single biggest mark of a good coach is maintaining locker room chemistry and turning that chemistry into wins on the field. With Holmgren-led teams a win was often followed by a heartbreaking loss, the kind that just drive daggers in your stomach. The kind that make you say "how the hell could we have lost this so badly?"

It made me sick to my stomach in 2008 when Holmgren, along with the entire team (who didn't care for him), mailed in the entire season to a 4-12 record, then at the end of the season when everyone is looking forward to a new coaching era, in an ego-fueled last ditch effort to preserve his "legacy", Holmgren starts prodding the front office for an extension, which they thankfully declined.

In my opinion, the 2005 Seahawks are the best team we've ever fielded, but Holmgren is nowhere near the best coach we've had. That honor should belong to Chuck Knox. Holmgren's teams had all the talent in the world but underachieved year after year after year, which suggests systemic coaching failure to me. He was by no means the disaster that Tom Flores was, but I consider him to be roughly on par with Dennis Erickson. The guy knew offense (though his offenses were pretty inconsistent post-'05), but under his regime there were always deficiencies on defense and special teams as they were merely an afterthought. His refusal to field Jason Babin confounds me to this day.

So, in summation, it's by no means a surprise to me that he totally screwed the pooch in Cleveland. He might have been over tasked while performing front office duties in Seattle but I think it should be plainly obvious by now that he is an abject failure in that role. The guy would be a great offensive coordinator if it were 1994, so long as he was not given any power whatsoever over personnel decisions. It's about time he hung it up for good as the NFL is evolving and he's refusing to adapt.

His biggest problem as a coach is he lacked adaptability. He expected players to fall into his system instead of massaging his system to match the skill set of the players he had.

Waiting for pehawk to say that Jason Garrett is keeping the coach seat warm for the Big Show to take over in Dallas in 3, 2, 1.......

Slick wrote:Waiting for pehawk to say that Jason Garrett is keeping the coach seat warm for the Big Show to take over in Dallas in 3, 2, 1.......

By no means am I mocking his hypothesis - I'd like to see Holmgren just coach again. How many times does "retirement" end up not being the case.

Slick wrote:

Slick wrote:Waiting for pehawk to say that Jason Garrett is keeping the coach seat warm for the Big Show to take over in Dallas in 3, 2, 1.......

By no means am I mocking his hypothesis - I'd like to see Holmgren just coach again. How many times does "retirement" end up not being the case.

Again.. Holmgren's ego is so large, barring Jerry Jones agreeing to get the hell out of his way.. it's not happening.

I think Holmgren is done.. he's been checked out of coaching for years.. BUT.. if he were to come back, my money would be on San Diego. Lots of talent there and he can do the Gruden thing and take a couple cracks at a Super Bowl run then ride off into the sunset.

Retiring is a save face situation. If he and his wife can agree that he has someting to finish he may be ack on the sidelines, he will pick his situation and have to have a GM that will accept his style and philosophy, that and given his age would need to have a team mostly built that he could make some subtle changes to that already has a WCO in place mostly.

This being discussed in the NFL Forum.

Plus this makes 3 posts about it.