The Broncos made their first Super Bowl appearance in 1978. They would return three more times in the next 12 years, but wouldn't win a title until 1998, Super Bowl XXXII, against the Green Bay Packers.
That Green Bay team was quarterbacked by the ageless Brett Favre and coached by Mike Holmgren, who would make his way to Seattle a season later. Favre and Holmgren had won the whole thing the year before, but fell 31-24 to the Broncos to give John Elway his first chance to sport a Super Bowl winners ring.
Well, according to then-Packers general manager Ron Wolf, Green Bay had no business losing that game.
Now we learn Wolf primarily blames Holmgren for the Packers' loss to the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXXII. Wolf said Holmgren was "pig-headed" in failing to adjust to the protection schemes to account for the Broncos' blitzes. In Wolf's view, Holmgren was aware of what needed to be done but didn't do it because he arrogantly believed in his own approach.It gets worse. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Bob Wolfley, former Packers safety LeRoy Butler said Holmgren was more interested in "showing off" than making a simple fix that would have made a difference in the game.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement of Holmgren's coaching style, though, oddly, I don't' remember many people complaining when the Packers won it all the year before. As Wolfley writes, whatever you think of Holmgren, this doesn't reflect well on Wolf. It's been 10 years since the loss and he's still hung up on the loss? Dude, get over it.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-03-2008 @ 11:46AM
SportsWrap said...
Maybe the Broncos were just better Ron.
http://sportswrap.berecruited.com/
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2-03-2008 @ 2:21PM
Tadd Trausch said...
I'm not surprised anyone affiliated with that team is not over what happened at the end of that season...the real issue is loyalty, hidden within Wolf's comments on general characteristics:"pig-headed". Your coach not only deciding to abandon ship the year after the biggest win in modern day Packerdom but letting that out to the press BEFORE the super bowl is inexcusable. No class at all, and certainly no consideration for the family that a football team becomes.
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2-03-2008 @ 2:41PM
jethawk1 said...
I remember the game well. Holmgren wasn't calling the defensive signals. The Packers' biggest problem was that they couldn't stop Terrell Davis from running roughshod over them. End of story.
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2-03-2008 @ 11:24PM
nastynate said...
if you watched the game, the reason davis ran over them is because the coaches wouldn't change their scheme and let butler make the plays in the running game that he had made all year. on the offensive side, all the Pack had to do was leave in another blocker and they would have avoided many costly plays... and if you read up on the game afterward, you would find that holmgren called a play on 4th down at the very end that the offense had barely run all season... pretty stupid for a head coach to make such basic mistakes in the biggest game of the year... kind of like mccarthy and his dumb screens in the nfc championship
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2-03-2008 @ 11:25PM
nastynate said...
oh and one more thing... holmgren didn't even let dorsey levens carry the 20 times and levens was one of the reasons we were in the game
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2-05-2008 @ 1:20PM
3000 said...
"I don't' remember many people complaining when the Packers won it all the year before."
Yeah, well, you wouldn't be likely to, would you? I think, though, if you need any insight into Holmgren's coaching style (and his shortcomings in play-off game planning, adjustments, and clock management) you need only look into his time in Seattle.
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2-05-2008 @ 4:14PM
JFCJR said...
What a poor excuse? You stop Terrell Davis and John Elway would have burned them all day and the score would not have been close! Don't believe me? Just ask Dan Reeves. That is exactly what he did the following year. Davis was stymied most of the day while Elway threw for 300+ yards in a rout and was named the Super Bowl MVP as Denver won back-to-back Super Bowls. Get over it loser....
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