Hall of Fame Voters Miss Mark - Again - Omitting Seahawks Legend Mike Holmgren From Canton
Seattle Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren on the sidelines prior to a game during the 2024 season.
As the only former NFL head coach to make the group of finalists for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2025 from the coach/contributor/senior division, after being bypassed for the likes of Bill Cowher and Dick Vermeil in recent years despite having more career wins than either of those coaches, the wait appeared to finally be over for legendary Seattle Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren to find his way into Canton.
But on Thursday night, an all-too-familiar sense of disappointment and dismay settled in at the annual NFL honors as only four inductees - the smallest incoming class since 2005 - received enough votes to be enshrined. Thanks to revised voting procedures meant to raise the bar for induction, only three modern finalists received the Hall call, while Holmgren once again came up short with voters choosing to elect former Packers receiver Sterling Sharpe as the lone inductee from the senior division over him.
Despite being one of only five head coaches in NFL history to lead multiple franchises to a Super Bowl and snag the Lombardi Trophy at least once, Holmgren hasn’t been a stranger when it comes to Hall of Fame heartbreak. He wasn’t able to get to the 80 percent vote threshold after being named a finalist in 2020, only to see Cowher and two-time Super Bowl winner Jimmy Johnson get elected instead. Two years later, he didn’t even make the final round as Vermeil, who had 41 less wins in his coaching career, received a gold jacket call over him.
The same thing happened to Holmgren again in 2023 with long-time Chargers coach Don Coryell earning a bust in Canton posthumously as he failed to advance past the semifinalists stage for the third straight year. Given Coryell’s impact developing the “Air Coryell” offense, he probably should have been elected while he was still alive decades earlier, making that miss more forgiving.
While losing out to a coaching pioneer such as Coryell or a multi-time Lombardi Trophy winner in Johnson made Holmgren’s exclusion more reasonable in prior voting cycles, however, the latest snub to be revealed at NFL honors on Thursday evening goes beyond inexplicable territory.
Without any other coaches on the final ballot to serve as road blocks this time around, this should have been Holmgren’s year. After hitting numerous speed bumps along the way, he hadn’t just reached the light at the end of the tunnel. He had exited the car and had a foot through the doorway to football immortality.
But as the names rolled off of Rich Eisen’s tongue at the podium, however, including Sharpe’s long-awaited induction, it became clear the proverbial door to the hallowed grounds of Canton had been slammed shut on Holmgren again. At this point, now more than a decade after he first became eligible, his lingering omission has put an ugly stain on the entire Hall of Fame voting process.
Total victories serve as only one component when it comes to electing coaches into the Hall of Fame. Obviously, winning the Super Bowl carries far more weight, and Johnson won one more Lombardi Trophy than Holmgren while on the sidelines for the Cowboys. In the case of Cowher, whether fair or not, the fact he beat Holmgren head to head when the Steelers outlasted the Seahawks in Super Bowl XL likely played into the decision to elect him over his coaching peer. In hindsight, picking those two coaches first can at least be defended.
Still, Holmgren won 12 more games than Cowher did. He had 50 more wins than Coryell and more than double the career wins that Johnson did. In fact, he had more wins than each of the previous six coaches to be enshrined ahead of him. He also had more combined playoff wins than any of those coaches.
And, unlike Cowher or Johnson or Coryell, Holmgren led two different franchises to the Super Bowl, becoming one of only five coaches in NFL history to achieve that feat while capturing at least one Lombardi Trophy. From that select group, three coaches - including Vermeil - have already been immortalized in Canton, while Chiefs coach Andy Reid - ironically a Holmgren disciple from Green Bay - will undoubtedly be a first ballot selection once he hangs up his whistle and becomes eligible for induction.
That leaves Holmgren as the only eligible member of that club who has been left hanging out in the rain without an umbrella on the sidewalk outside the front entrance of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
A key architect behind the modern West Coast offense and a steward for one of the most impressive coaching trees in league history, all of those previous wrongs could have been righted on Thursday night, putting a pioneer in his own right finally into Canton where he belongs. Without any other coaches standing in his way, it should have been a given that Eisen announced his name as a recipient for the NFL’s most prestigious individual honor.
But as has been the case far too many times in the past decade and change, voters struck out swinging, inviting much-deserved criticism and scrutiny by denying arguably the most underrated coach in NFL history entry to the Hall again. Further magnifying the latest err in judgment, six-time Super Bowl winner Bill Belichick will be a surefire first ballot selection next year and depending on when Reid decides to walk away, a new rule requiring only one year away from the game before induction creates a real possibility Holmgren could be cast out until at least 2027, if not longer.
Simply put, it’s an absolute travesty Holmgren will have to wait at least one more year before getting fitted with a gold jacket. This was supposed to be the year. It had to be the year. And in the end, the voting committee dropped the ball, shrouding whatever credibility they still had in doubt.
