Holmgren’s finale frustrating

RENTON – Mike Holmgren has never experienced anything like this sorry Seahawks season in his 17 years as an NFL head coach.

Expectations of a glorious farewell ride into his sabbatical next year have crashed, leaving a pileup of injuries and ineptitude. Now Holmgren is spending his final weeks as Seattle’s coach imploring his players not to quit on him, while assuring the players he won’t quit “until the last play of the last game this year.”

On Monday, Holmgren, 60, who is 10th on the league’s all-time coaching victories list with 172, told his Seahawks (2-6) of the job he had constructing an apartment complex in the Bay Area when he was a teenager.

“I’ll tell you, it was just awful. I mean, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And I probably wanted to quit about 25 times, but I didn’t,” Holmgren said a day after a 26-7 loss at home to Philadelphia made a sixth consecutive playoff berth for Seattle seem impossible. “I was 15 years old and my hands were bleeding. And no one cared. I wasn’t going to let my dad down, so I didn’t quit.

“They nearly broke me. But it was a good lesson for me later in life. The message (Monday) was: Everyone in the room has to make choices when it gets hard. … What decisions you make says a lot about you and, really, a lot about their future.”

Seattle is off to its worst start in six years, after five consecutive seasons in the playoffs.

“It’s been a heck of a deal,” Holmgren said. “And I feel bad about it. I feel bad for them. I feel bad for our fans.”

Holmgren said linebacker Lofa Tatupu, held out of the loss to the Eagles so he wouldn’t make his groin injury worse, may practice Wednesday. Same with fullback Leonard Weaver, who missed Sunday’s game with a bruised foot.