Mike Holmgren Playing Quotations

Carolina offered him just a phenomenal financial package, and he was gone. Ken had developed his skills. We drafted him, we liked him, he had gotten better and better and better, and now he's playing at a certain level. That was a good signing by Carolina.

It happens, because now you're down to one game, and anything can happen in any one game. But I think if you look over percentages over the last however many years, most of the times the guys that are playing at home have the advantage. So we're choosing to look at it that way.

We're working to keep him here in Seattle. If he keeps playing he could have his best season ever and that's saying something. He's a complete player.

That was very distasteful to me, to retaliate so to speak like that (against the Vikings). I do believe the commissioner should look into these kind of clauses. We work so hard on trying to gain labor peace and a new collective bargaining agreement and then we as clubs allow agents to get cute and circumvent it. On the playing field there are rules and there are unwritten rules about how the game should be played in the spirit and the fairness of it all. It doesn't make sense to me that we had to lose such a fine football player this way. I was surprised by the ruling.

With the numbers he has put up, I think if you don't approach it at the start that way, you're making a huge mistake. He catches 14 balls, 12 balls, 13 balls, that's a lot of passes in a game. Clearly, they want him to be a big part of what they do. ... You better have some sort of answer for playing them or they can make you look pretty bad.

The tough thing in this league about playing the linebacker position is that as a rookie you are seeing many things for the first time and you are going against athletes that you didn't always play against when you were in college. The physical part of it is tough, but they have handled that beautifully. Then it was just a matter if they could handle the volumes of material that are expanded a little bit when you get into our league.

As I've told the team, ultimately you'll be judged by what happens and where you are at the end of the season. I understand why we are the underdogs, and there's really only one way to handle that. That's not by talking, it's by playing the game and seeing what happens.

This year, we're under the radar and we're playing well. I think we can stay that way for a while ? as long as we keep winning.

This game certainly is bigger. I think playing in this game at this nice facility juices everybody up a little bit, so you might get a little more out of them.

It was a sad thing what happened to Kenny. The good part is that he has healed up. What his football future is, I can't tell you right now. I'm somewhat optimistic about it. He will be there with us Sunday. He has had an emotional impact on this football team before he was hurt and certainly after the injury. My hope and prayer is that he will be able to continue playing football next year.

It's like, OK, we're playing the game and those guys are upstairs doing whatever they are doing,

Be careful how you phrase that. I'm not surprised how he's playing and I didn't want to let him go. I wanted him to stay, but he was given a fabulous contract by Carolina and so he did what was best for he and his family.