Former Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Holmgren joined KJR’s Dave “Softy” Mahler this morning to talk about his renewed interest in returning to the NFL next year in 2010.

Holmgren said he’s in Salt Lake City babysitting his granddaughter Emma. Holmgren’s daughter Calla, a doctor who lives in Utah, joined his wife Kathy on a relief effort to work in refugee camps in Uganda.

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According to this report from the Washington Post, former Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Holmgren is ready to return to the NFL (hat tip to Field Gulls).

Per the report, Holmgren talked with former Seattle Times reporter Les Carpenter, now with the Washington Post, about returning to the league in some capacity.

Here's an excerpt.

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Opening statement:
"I think we gave it a good go for a while and we got beat by some really fine players. (Larry) Fitzgerald is one of the best, plus he's a tremendous kid. I told Ken (Whisenhunt) and Russ (Grimm) and those guys after the game -- and I meant it -- they've worked really hard to get to this point and I wish them well in the playoffs. The Seahawks and the Cardinals are going to battle it out every year and we'll be back next year and hopefully have a few more of our guys. I was very proud of the way the players battled and it was a great effort -- we just ran out of guys. Kyle Williams, the only guy who really got hurt, had a concussion and they're going to take him to the hospital -- but I think it's a quick deal and I believe he'll be able to fly back with us."

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(On the game)
“I don’t know what to say, its been so long. I thought it was a great effort by the guys in the second half. I thought we played a poor football game in the first half. So I challenged them a little at half time and I think they responded beautifully. They are very happy, they should be, they worked very hard. In this league a win is a win. I am very happy with the players.”

(On the second half)
“We struggled on our pass protection in the first half. We made some adjustments at half time. I threw the ball a little quicker in the second half. We ran the ball a little bit more. We were not a able to spend much time dropping back and throwing the ball, we just couldn’t. They did a nice job of blitzing us.”

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(Opening… ) The easy thing to write I suppose, or to say, is that we lost another close ball game. That is what has happened the last few times we have been at home, with an ending like that, where we have turned the ball over when we had the ball and we had to go down and score. I personally feel, that this game is a lot different than that, this particular game today. Without singling out any one person, I think the players played a good football game against a good team. But, we fell short. In some ways it is the same, but I think today was quite different in a lot of ways. I was proud of how they played.

(On the play of Seneca Wallace…) Seneca is the obvious. Quarterback is usually the obvious, and I think played well. He played within himself, he made special plays, I think. He threw 3 touchdown passes, no interceptions. It is the type of game you would like to have a quarterback play.

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On The Loss
I think Dallas really is a good football team. They are tough to play against, very explosive offensively. I don’t think the short week and the travel were to fault, they are good and I will give them that. It’s a tough year for us but we are going to keep it going.

Normally speaking I think we would have pass contested a little bit better than what we did today. At one point I did think our pressure on Romo helped slow him down. Yes, I think it could have helped to start the game but who’s to say that wouldn’t have worked. Dallas has a charismatic QB that they believe in and explosive team. They have a good group over there.

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(On the final offensive play… ) It wasn’t supposed to be an interception , I’m fairly certain about that. We were in a two minute offense. It didn’t look like the play had much of a chance on the throw. I think he probably wanted to take it back. I believe he was throwing it to Koren.

(On whether Koren is supposed to always take a high angle on the corner…) It depends upon the coverage. If it is man to man coverage, depending upon where he has body position on the defender, then we like him to keep it high. If the guy is over the top, then he can flatten it off. But, if it is straight man-to-man, he probably should keep it high.

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(Opening…) Well, you all saw the movie “Groundhog Day.” It’s starting to feel like that just a little bit. This game was decided, though, like most games, on turnovers, and they got a couple very, very important turnovers; more than a couple, and we got a couple too. That’s kind of what decided it. I think that , once again, the team battled back from a little bit of a hole, but it was a bit of too little, too late. But, I love them. But, now our goals have changed. We came into the season with very high expectations, it has been a difficult season. I just told them, that it is very very important, it will be important to them not only this season but in future Seahawk seasons, and really after they finish playing football, is how they approach the last part of this year. I will talk to them at length about it tomorrow, and we’ll establish some new goals. But, how they approach it is going to be very important, it is important to this team. I think we’re victims, a little bit, of rust, from the guys that came back, but bless their hearts they played hard; Matt and Deion and the guys we had. Give credit to Arizona. Ken Whisenhunt has done a great job of building that thing up. They believe in him and what they’re trying to do, and I think they have great skill on this team. I think we made it interesting at the end, we were just a little bit short.

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(Opening…) Well, it was a tough one. The Philadelphia Eagles are a good football team. As has been the case the last few weeks, we had to play a near perfect offensive football game to take some of the pressure off our defense, and we dropped a couple of balls I felt we should have had. I don’t think I’m going to like the protection too much, when I look at the film. I am anticipating that, maybe that’s not the case. And our defense played very, very hard. They kept them out of the end zone for the most part. Again, the thing that has been our Achilles Heel a little bit this season, for them, is the one on one pass matchups. They got a couple of those, and we can’t score enough points to help them enough. They are trying hard, it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart, but we are not getting enough to show for it.

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€œClearly it feels a lot better this week than it has the last couple. I thought the guys responded very well this week. As I told you, they practiced well. I think they played very hard today and this game, unlike the last couple, we were able to come up with the big plays: [Josh Wilson’s] interception, of course, [Leonard] Weaver’s two big plays and that was really the difference. We need to have those next week and today we got it. I think our defense played a much better game against them down here than we did in Seattle. I thought we rallied pretty good. I thought we did a decent job on [Isaac] Bruce, he really had a great game against us up there. [Frank] Gore is always a tough one, so you do the best you can with him, but it’s a great win. I’m very happy for the players. As hard as they work, they deserve a little ice cream so it was good.”

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(Opening…) Well, it’s tough right now. My message to the team when I called them together is one that they have heard before from me, but it is very important that they hear me now. It is a test of sorts, you know we are not used to this. We are certainly not used to losing games at home, and we are not used to being in the position we’re in. It’s been a long time, but here we are; so how do we deal with it, as players and coaches. It is very, very important that they answer that question. It’s easy to slap people on the back and coach and play when things are going well, and then it becomes a little more difficult when it is not going so well. That is a challenge for us right now, because it is hard right now. We are not playing very good football. And we still have a lot of games left to play. So, we have to start dealing with that sort of question in our locker room and in our building.

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Opening Statement: Well, that was what we call a good old-fashioned you-know-what. I believe we’re a better football team than that, but give the Giants credit. They really took it to us today. I think there’s only one thing we can do now and that’s lick our wounds a little bit and realize that it doesn’t get any easier. Green Bay, we have them next week, so we’re going to go home and make every attempt to fix things that went wrong in the game today and then get this one behind us. This was a bad one. They got us pretty good. They’re a talented team, and they got rolling and we couldn’t stop them.

Question: What do you tell the team after a game like this?

Response: Essentially that. I believe we’re better than we’ve played. We’re a good team that hasn’t played up to its potential yet. When you go up against a good team, they can make you look bad, and that’s what the Giants did today. Having said that, let’s do our best. Everyone has to fix it, coaches and players. There are any number of statistical analyses of teams that have started this bad and still done okay, but those don’t mean much unless you improve the product, and what you’re doing on the field. So that’s our goal and then we’ll get this one behind us rather quickly, I trust, and get on with Green Bay. You don’t have any choice because you have a really good football team coming in next week.

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