Why Tom Coughlin is my #1 coach on the ballot

[readjack]

I don't know that Holmgren is helped by his Seattle tenure. Yeah, he made one SB (a loss) but he was there for 10 years. Plus he had a great situation in GB, arguably should have made more SBs but he quit on that team for more power in Seattle. By all reports he was nothing special in the front office too. I think that tends to hurt his candidacy.

To each their own. I'm the exact opposite on his time in Seattle. The Seahawks missed the playoffs for 10 straight seasons before Holmgren arrived. They won their division his first year (admittedly a weak champ at 9-7), missed the playoffs for three years (though with a 9-7 season) and then went to the playoffs five straight seasons, including four straight division titles and the Super Bowl appearance.

All of the best players on the '05 Seahawks with the exception of Walter Jones — and obviously that's a huge exception — arrived under Holmgren, including Hutchinson, Alexander, Hasselbeck, Tatupu, Wistrom, Tobeck, Trufant, Boulware and their entire receiving corps. They didn't all arrive when he was GM, but it's fair to say that he built that team as much if not more than Dungy's Bucs or Coughlin's Jaguars.

The problem is that Holmgren is compared to his own history with the Packers. With Ron Wolf as GB, the Packers had an even more dismal recent history than the Seahawks, and turned it all around to a SB Championship and a return appearance the following year.

While Holmgren (at the time) was the most successful Seahawks coach, he wasn't as successful as he was with the Packers. Ron Wolf, who didn't leave for another job, is in the HOF and Holmgren isn't. A lot of that is narrative, even though Holmgren had longer after the SB appearances than Wolf did, he left, had the hubris to think he could do both jobs, eventually lost the GM job, and didn't win a SB the way he did with the Packers. It honestly probably hurts his chances, the Packers aren't going to boost him as much as other players associated with the team; it's why Wolf and Leroy Butler got in and Holmgren is still waiting.

I'm sure it's the same issue with Buddy Parker. Left a great situation with the Lions (they in fact won the year he left.) While his tenure with the Steelers was successful by the then standards of that franchise, he never even made the playoffs with the team. So the controversy of the departure is enough to stall the progress to the HOF.

Sure. My point is that the Seahawks are his 2nd team, and his 2nd team went to a Super Bowl. So if you do first team / second team with the champs on the list:

SHANAHAN: Broncos, 2x champs — Raiders/Washington, 6 years, 1 postseason
COUGHLIN: Giants, 2x champs — Jaguars, 8 years, .531 winning percentage (same as on NYG), 4x playoffs, 2x AFCCG
SEIFERT: 49ers, 2x champs — Panthers, 3 years, .333 winning percentage
HOLMGREN: Packers, 1x champ, 2x SB — Seahawks, 10 years, .538 winning percentage, 6x playoffs, 1x SB