Mike Holmgren: My work aided in sale of team

We won’t think about his legacy much, either, I guess.

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Right you are. And he established the Ring of Honor and, most important of all, he got rid of the brown pants along with Mangini. Not sure if that’s worth $5 mil a year or not, but it was nice.

I wonder if he factored in his 20 mil buyout when he spoke of profitability?

I really don’t get the visceral hatred of Holmgren. Day to day, the team was not the laughingstock that they were before he got here. Sure, Holmgren and his guys dropped the ball a few times*, but there is almost no doubt that the team is in much better shape now than they were when he got here.I wish it was in terms of wins and losses but some progress is better than no progress. Meanwhile, while it’s nice to have a new owner, having Holmgren stay might have been a better option, since he too would have fired Shurmur and brought in someone new, and there would be less suspense about whether the whole team would be overhauled.

*Yes, it probably would have been better for the team if he had let Mangini go a year earlier, but you can’t kill the guy for being a decent human being.

let’s see if i can brighten your future outlook.

worst loss this season: 10pt loss that we never really had a shot at getting much closer vs. Bills (who happen to be the worst team we faced this year — only because the Eagles didn’t implode quite yet, but still)

no blowouts, competitive each week. real good chances to win in Eagles, 1st Cinci, 1st Balt, Dallas, and had big lead vs. Giants early. Indy, Bills, and 2nd Balt game felt like other team had control, but we kept the score close and had decent shots at getting closer in 2 of them.

did all of the above while missing our best CB (Haden), 2 best DTs (Rubin, Taylor), SOLB (Gocong), lost LG (Pinkston), and multiple injuries up&down the WR line (MoMass, Benjamin, Cooper, Norwood, Watson). this means we showed decent depth to keep these games close (though missing Haden really hurt our secondary and was pretty obvious).

Winn, Robertson, Fort, Hughes – all rookies on defense that have had very nice moments. Especially Winn (plugged in as starter even with Rubin/Taylor back) and Robertson (best coverage LBer on the team). That’s without mentioning JMJ who is starting to progress the last 4 weeks despite missing early with injuries.

Rubin/Taylor/Sheard + Rucker/Parker for depth gives us a hellish DL for an opponent to face.

DQ+Maiava (thought he was a lost cause but he’s had a few decent plays lately) gives us some depth at LBer (we still need a jaw-dropper here).

Haden+Ward give us some good youth in the secondary but Brown, Skrine, Patterson, Young, Hagg have shown we need more talent here. Still, they have done better than expected overall.

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OL: JoeT, Pinkston/Greco, Mack, Lauvao, Schwartz

Pinkston was impressing me until he got hurt. a shame. but, I think we just need a RG and we’ll be set at OL. 3rd/4th round pick should do the trick. we have a good OL as it is.

and JoeT is the elder statesman here. a very young OL as well.

RB: Richardson, Hardesty

who thought Hardesty would show promise? not sure if he can stay healthy (as he’s not getting any type of load), but he’s looked good. both young.
another young group.

WR: Gordon, Little, Benjamin

outside of them, you can replace them all for all I care. but each of those 3 have shown they can be apart of our WR corps moving forward. not sure what Little did about his drops but he hasn’t been dropping lately. of course, he’s not getting as many targets because Gordon is actually running routes now besides going long every time. Benjamin is a jitterbug if he can stay healthy (big if with his size).
and all 1st or 2nd year players.

TE: Watson (old), Cameron (disappointing)

really an area that needs obvious improvement. starting to show better but Watson bobbles too many even when he catches it and Cameron just isn’t what I had hoped. he still likely has another year to “get it” but his time is likely running short for us.

QB: Weeden
here’s the stumbling block. on one hand, he had a better game against Pitt than the other rookie QBs they have faced (including RGIII). on the other hand, his accuracy has lagged recently, he’s progressing but we want to see that “breakout game” and his YPA isn’t impressive. I like the improvements (not staring down the primary, spreading the ball around, etc.), but he has a long way to go. he is just a rookie though. we shall see.
KR/PR: Cribbs has had a resurgent year. if he can come back on a ST deal, then great. if not, then we’ll have to replace a good asset.

K: HOFer Phil Dawson (or he would be if he wasn’t stuck on a bad team for so long)

P: Hodges (if we replaced him, i wouldn’t be heartbroken. he’s okay, but not great)
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a team with this much youth is fighting/clawing to stay in games and is doing a pretty fine job at that. not the crazy up and down games you see with alot of young teams (though alot of up and down plays themselves).
i, myself, am pretty excited about all of this youth maturing and hope that if we replace the current regime completely (seemingly likely – though holding out some hope for Heckert) that we will make the correct choice in the replacement and that the key cogs will remain (mostly those mentioned above).
i don’t want another situation where there are only 5 guys from this team left the next time we face the NFC East (as there were this time around from 2008 – JoeT, Cribbs, Dawson, DQ, Rubin).

That’s not even close to true and if you were being honest with yourself, you’d be able to admit it.