GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) -There was a time Mike Holmgren owned this place.
The stadium, the town, may as well throw in the whole state while you’re at it. He’s got his own street a Brett Favre spiral away from the stadium, and he’ll always be cherished for how he resurrected a proud franchise that was down on its luck and turned it into a champion again.
But there’s a time and place for nostalgia, and Saturday at snowy Lambeau Field most definitely was not it.
The Green Bay Packers knocked Holmgren and his Seattle Seahawks around, ran over them and ended any hope they had of playing in their second Super Bowl in three years. In the process, the Packers might have brought Holmgren’s illustrious career to an end, too.
Holmgren still has another season left on the two-year deal he signed after Seattle’s Super Bowl season. But he has dropped hints that this might be it for him, that he’s ready to trade the daily grind of an NFL coach for time with his family and more of those long motorcycle rides across the desert that he loves so much.
If this was his final game, this couldn’t be the way he imagined leaving. With his team bumbling around the field in the 42-20 loss, he stood stoically on the sideline, looking like the Abominable Holmgren with so much snow piled on top of him it obscured his hat and headset and bleached his bushy mustache white.
The team that was so dominant last week against Washington looked lost among the flurries. It managed a measly 200 yards – and only 28 of those came on the ground – and couldn’t hang on to the 14-point lead it took just two minutes into the game. The Packers, meanwhile, frolicked.
Favre, Holmgren’s old protege, completed passes at will, including a wobbly, underhanded one he had no business trying – the kind that used to drive Holmgren nuts. With Ryan Grant rushing for a Packers postseason-record 201 yards, the team that had no running game to speak of early in the season actually looked like a smashmouth team.
And Holmgren was helpless to do anything about it.
One game won’t be his legacy, of course. Far from it, especially for this man.
He’s won 170 games with Green Bay and Seattle, been to three Super Bowls and won one of them. The playoffs may as well be part of his permanent schedule, what with him making his 34th appearance Saturday.
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