A remarkable ride for Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren

This is a story about evolution. The change of both a franchise and a coach. A transformation that took 10 seasons and didn't follow a route anyone foresaw. Not owner Paul Allen. Not the front office Allen inherited. Not even Mike Holmgren himself.

Holmgren arrived in 1999, and took over a Seahawks team sunk to its waist in mediocrity. He set about making it meaningful. He has seen it through the move from the Kingdome to Husky Stadium and into Qwest Field, where the franchise reached its greatest height with the Super Bowl season of 2005. Today, he'll coach his final Seahawks game at Qwest Field.

He has become a grandfather, lost his mother and now, in his 10th and final season, he has gritted his teeth through the worst year of his professional career. But Holmgren reminds his team after every season that you can't focus on the final result to define whether a season was successful. After all, only one of 32 teams in the NFL gets to end with the ultimate victory. A season must be judged on the journey. Same goes for a coaching career.

Take a look at the trip that Holmgren and this franchise have taken. Ten years that can only begin to be described by the people who were there along the way.

The arrival

Holmgren is hired as coach, general manager and vice president of football operations in January 1999, coming from Green Bay to a team that had not made the playoffs in 11 years and had gone 8-8 in three of the previous four seasons under coach Dennis Erickson.

HOLMGREN: "The city of Seattle, just from the feel of the water and the trees and the environment, the city reminded me a little of where I grew up, in San Francisco. Being on the West Coast was another thing — closer to family. My mom at that time was still alive. There was an attraction there. The team, the idea of building something up, the challenge of that is kind of a part of me somehow."

BOB WHITSITT, former Seahawks president: "I had to trade a second-round pick to get him and I had to make him the general manager, that was part of the proviso to get him out of Green Bay, kind of a steep price ... Then I wanted to make a long-term commitment to him."

BRETT FAVRE, the quarterback Holmgren left in Green Bay: "I mean, I was floored. I just thought he would be there as long as I would. It was one of those things where I thought, 'Well, here goes my career.' I mean, I was at that point where I really knew how important he was."

CHAD BROWN, former Seahawks linebacker: "I've had some pretty good coaches over the years, and how a coach walks into a meeting and approaches that meeting, essentially sets the tone for a meeting. There's somebody at the door. He walks to the podium, the guy closes the door, the room gets quiet and the meeting has started. There's a way you come in and a presence that a good coach or a good leader has and that's how he was."

WALTER JONES, Seahawks tackle: "He'd proven himself wherever he'd been. I knew it was just going to be the best for us, show us the right way. And everything he has said has almost happened. I've got nothing but respect for him."

The construction project

Seattle made the playoffs in 1999, the first season under Holmgren, but the next season the Seahawks began the Great Salary Purge, led by salary-cap guru Mike Reinfeldt, the vice president who came to Seattle with Holmgren from Green Bay.

HOLMGREN: "He came into my office and said, 'They won't let us play. We can't play. We're over. We're way over. We have to cut eight players or something just to get legal.' "

WHITSITT: "One thing I know in sports, and moreso in the NFL, if we were going to do this and build it right and give the coach time to get his system in place, it's going to be three to four years to let the seeds grow."

GIL HASKELL, offensive coordinator: "You know what, he took over a bad football team. People don't say that, but whenever a coach takes over a team, it's usually a bad team ... You get bad teams and then you've got to make them better and Mike did that."

HOLMGREN: "My reputation when I was first here was that I had every single answer in the book. I don't know, maybe I portrayed that somehow. I was learning, and I continue to learn and I have learned."

The crossroads

The Seahawks finished 7-9 in 2002, their first season in the brand new stadium, and missed the playoffs for the third consecutive season. Seattle concluded the year with a three-game winning streak, which Holmgren saw as proof the team had not given up on him. He lost his general manager's responsibilities in December, but chose to remain as the coach.

WHITSITT: "I was under pressure to fire him. After '02, I saved him by convincing people upstairs I could take away his general manager's responsibilities and get him back to just coaching ... The powers to be did want him fired, but we were only halfway through the program, I believe in this guy."

HASKELL: "I knew we had a good football team. I knew we were good. The only thing I thought was somebody was going to get this team before we went to the Super Bowl. I would have been really pissed because we had put it all in place. Then if he would have gotten fired or if he would have decided to get out of it, somebody would have walked in here and had a great football team."

Seattle reached the playoffs each of the next two seasons. In 2003, Seattle won 10 games, its most since 1986 and lost an overtime playoff game in Green Bay. The next season was supposed to be the great leap forward, the year Seattle vaulted into the elite. Instead, the Seahawks suffered fourth-quarter meltdowns against St. Louis and Dallas and then lost a playoff game at home against the Rams when quarterback Matt Hasselbeck's pass bounced off Bobby Engram's hands in the end zone. It was the Seahawks' third loss to the Rams that season.

HOLMGREN: "That was the first time I'd finished a season here that I thought, 'You know, maybe I ought to think about going back to teaching or something.' I felt very, very badly about that game, because I thought we'd battled through some things that season. It was kind of an up-and-down year, and to have it end like that ... "

The redemption

Whitsitt was fired after the 2004 season and Tim Ruskell was hired to become the team's president. The Seahawks drafted linebackers Lofa Tatupu and Leroy Hill, had a franchise-record 11-game winning streak and won the team's first playoff game in 21 seasons.

Holmgren became just the fifth coach to take two teams to the Super Bowl.

SEAN LOCKLEAR, offensive lineman: "It's almost like a blur because things were happening so fast. I look back on that season, everything was just going by so fast."

MARCUS TRUFANT, Seahawks cornerback: "It was smiles all the way around. He had the stories of when he made it in the past. It was fitting for him to make it again, and I think that's his legacy."

MATT HASSELBECK, Seahawks quarterback: "He's a guy that people listen to. He's a guy that people follow."

HOLMGREN: "Going to the Super Bowl was really something very, very, very special for my staff, my family, the organization, all that kind of stuff. Kind of because of what we've been through to get there."

The legacy

His final season in Seattle will conclude with his worst record since he coached a winless high-school team in the Bay Area more than 35 years ago. The Seahawks' offense was ravaged by injuries, first at wide receiver and later along the offensive line.

His record this season is forgettable, but that doesn't make his presence any less memorable as he prepares to coach his final game at the stadium he guided the Seahawks into.

HASSELBECK: "We were playing the Cowboys on Thanksgiving, and he talked about basically what he was thankful for. It's part of his leadership style. At the end of the meeting, every guy in there felt like, 'Hey, I would take a bullet for this guy, or I'd run through a wall for this guy.' Or, to use an analogy that actually matters, 'I'd would go blow up a wedge for this guy. Or I'd play hurt for this guy.'

"And that, as a coach, that's a lot of times what you need."

TOD LEIWEKE, Seahawks CEO: "Outside the owner, there's never been a guy who's had a greater impact on the franchise. ... Mike really gave life to the bricks and mortar. Shame on us if we can't continue what he's started and sustain the momentum."

HOLMGREN: "I will always remember the stadium. This place. Qwest Field. I think it's a remarkable place to compete in and to play professional football."

Danny O'Neil: 206-464-2364 or doneil@seattletimes.com