Mike Holmgren gives his opinion on Seahawks head coach search

Holmgren wants an offensive-minded head coach.

Former Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Holmgren was on the Dave ‘Softy’ Mahler and Dick Fain show on Sports Radio KJR earlier this week, and he chimed in on the team’s current head coach search to replace Pete Carroll.

Holmgren and Seahawks general manager John Schneider have ties dating back to the Green Bay Packers and the one year Schneider was Director of Player Personnel in Seattle in 2000. According to Holmgren, he told Schneider that he would hire an offensive-minded coach.

“I’ve mentioned this to John when I talked to him,” Holmgren said. “I said, ‘Look, you’re going to make the right call, you’ve got to [choose] who you think is the right guy, but if you want my two cents, it’d be an offensive guy.’ Because that’s how I grew up. That’s how I came into the league.

“I said, ‘It’s an offensive guy who will hire a great defensive coordinator, okay, and off you go.

“Hopefully the guy he hires will be the play-caller,” Holmgren concluded. “He won’t be standing there and have someone else call the plays. You have the new head coach call the plays.”

Holmgren, of course, comes from an offensive background and was a Super Bowl-winning offensive coordinator with the San Francisco 49ers before getting his first head coaching job with the Green Bay Packers.

It’s worth noting that Holmgren’s successors in both Seattle and Green Bay were coaches from defensive backgrounds who lasted only one season. Ray Rhodes, Holmgren’s former defensive coordinator who’d just been let go by the Philadelphia Eagles, was the only candidate for the Packers after Holmgren took the Seahawks job. He was fired after an 8-8 season, and eventually he reunited with Holmgren as Seattle’s DC. Prior to the start of Holmgren’s retirement season, the team announced his successor would be secondary coach Jim Mora, with general manager Tim Ruskell citing “stability and unity” as part of why he was selected. Mora was fired after the team was very unstable, not unified, and extremely terrible.

The offensive coordinators on the Seahawks’ current list of candidates includes the Detroit Lions’ Ben Johnson, the Miami Dolphins’ Frank Smith, the New York Giants’ Mike Kafka, and the Houston Texans’ Bobby Slowik.