Detroit – The List started getting noticed sometime in the late 1990s.
It wasn’t just Joe Montana, Steve Young in college and the pros, or Brett Favre who had people buzzing about the list of quarterbacks coached by Mike Holmgren. Those names, to be sure, were never ignored, but Montana, Young and Favre also created the sense that anybody could have coached them and looked smart.
It was the names further down the list, though, that started raising eyebrows.
Below the stars were second-stringers who eventually developed into quality starters. There was Steve Bono with the San Francisco 49ers, and Mark Brunell, Ty Detmer, Kurt Warner and Matt Hasselbeck with the Green Bay Packers.
It was these former scrubs, along with Montana, Young and Favre, who gave Holmgren the distinction not only of becoming one of the best NFL head coaches, but the guru of quarterback instruction.
From this list, Hasselbeck is the hottest. He’s the Holmgren disciple starting for the Holmgren-coached Seattle Seahawks, who will play the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday in Super Bowl XL at Ford Field.
“When I got drafted to Green Bay, I felt really fortunate,” Hasselbeck said. “There’s a little bit of pride. Having never met Mark Brunell, the Ty Detmers, I know when I was there, I used to watch them and their careers, hoping someday I would be in that category – one of those guys Mike Holmgren coached, backed up Brett Favre, and got to go on and be successful.”
Either this cadre of Holmgren quarterbacks can be explained as a continuous stroke of draft-luck coincidence, or there is something in the stodgy coach’s methods that nourishes football’s pretty boys.
“I don’t think there are any secrets, and I certainly don’t think there is any magic formula,” Holmgren said. “The first quarterback I worked with in the NFL was Joe Montana and, of course, he was no good until I got there.”
In a twisted way, Holmgren said Montana the pupil helped him become a better coach.
In high school, Holmgren was a good enough quarterback to earn a scholarship to Southern California and make Jim Plunkett temporarily play defensive end in a postseason prep all-star game. After coaching in high school, Holmgren’s talent and ambition took him to Brigham Young University, where he was an assistant coach to quarterbacks Young and Robbie Bosco, who started for the 1984 national championship team.
The BYU glory years helped Holmgren land his first NFL job working as an assistant in San Francisco with coach Bill Walsh and Montana, who by then already had two Super Bowl titles.
“I had just come from college and I was like, ‘What am I going to teach Joe Montana?”‘ Holmgren said. “But Joe wanted to be coached. That’s one thing I learned is even the great quarterbacks want to be coached.”
In a sense, Montana helped create a quarterback-coaching monster. Holmgren figured if he could get Montana to listen, then he darn well expected Hasselbeck to pay attention.
Only Hasselbeck was not unlike most know-it-all jocks sitting in the back of the classroom – no one could tell him anything. Holmgren left Green Bay for Seattle after the 1998 season, giving Hasselbeck two seasons to learn from Favre.
Great. By the time Holmgren acquired Hasselbeck in a trade before the 2001 season, he was coaching the hardheaded Favre all over again.
“They have different personalities but they were both talented, both could be stubborn, and both are eventually willing to be coached,” Holmgren said.
While Favre never has duplicated his best seasons under Holmgren, Hasselbeck has grown from a sixth-round draft pick out of Boston College to five-year NFL starter who has led the Seahawks to the playoffs each of the past three years, including the franchise’s first Super Bowl.
How did Holmgren help Hasselbeck grow up? Mechanical adjustments needed to be made, but mostly Holmgren focused on reads and making split-second decisions while 21 other players were running around the field at the same time.
“He sets the standard really high, especially at the quarterback position, and he isn’t going to settle for anything less,” Hasselbeck said. “Bottom line is he just wants you to do things his way and if you do that, things will work out and he will be happy and you won’t have that friction.”
Staff writer Mike Klis can be reached at 303-820-5440 or mklis@denverpost.com.
