Vic Ketchman of Jaguars.com calls Hawks coach Mike Holmgren "overrated" and mistaken for not featuring RB Shaun Alexander more prominently in Super Bowl XL. He elaborates here. Ketchman is one of the official team Web-site guys who has some freedom to express opinions. I'm not into the overrated/underrated and respsect/no respect debates, but Ketchman does raise an interesting point about how Holmgren called the Super Bowl game.

The Seahawks had 49 passes and 25 rushes in the game (official stats here). That included 21 passes and 10 rushes in the first half, when the game was close. Based on that information, and based on the fact that Alexander averaged 4.8 yards per carry for the game (though only 3.1 ypc in the first half), it's a fair question.

Holmgren has never hidden the fact that he likes to throw the ball. He thinks the passing game is what makes everything work. And while he has relied more heavily on the running game recently, that wasn't really the case in the Super Bowl. Granted, if the Seahawks catch a few more passes and get a break or two, that very same game plan might have led to a comfortable victory. Those things did not happen, and so we explore what the team could have done differently. A few more carries for the league MVP might have helped. Alexander did seem to be very close to breaking some long runs in that game.

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Did I mention this is a pretty slow time around the league? We'll see more draft choices signing, of course, but the inevitable isn't very exciting in my book. Looking around the Web today, we see that Hawks RB Shaun Alexander and former Hawks FB Heath Evans hold their Next Level Weekend in Alabama. ... We see that Larry Weisman of USA Today mentions Hawks QB Matt Hasselbeck and LT Walter Jones while taking a look at increasing NFL salaries. The story says Hasselbeck and Jones collected $19 million and $17.7 million, respectively, in 2005. That is true in theory if not quite in reality; $14.5 million of that money was deferred to March 2006 (the breakdown: $7 million of Hasselbeck's bonus and $7.5 million of Jones' bonus). USA Today also links to the paper's salary database, which includes information only through last season. ... There is also a rather bizarre trail of stories involving ex-Hawk Koren Robinson (my thoughts here). ... The NFL pickings are otherwise pretty slim this morning, but not for long. Training camp is only three weeks out.