Cortez Kennedy will play his first postseason game Sunday against the Dolphins.

"First of all, guys don't like to come into my office very much," Holmgren said. "They're usually in trouble when they do that. But he came up, and we talked. He was very emotional about the fact that he's in this playoff game. He was very emotional about this opportunity."

The Seahawks (9-7) will play the Miami Dolphins (9-7) on Sunday in an AFC wild-card game at the Kingdome.

Selected for his eighth Pro Bowl this season, Kennedy wanted to thank Holmgren for coaching the team into the playoffs in his first season here.

"I said, 'Don't thank me, I'm thanking you,' " Holmgren said.

"This is something these guys remember and play for," he said. "You don't get in situations like this all the time. The younger fellas have to fight the urge to think, 'It's going to happen. This will just happen year to year.' Well, it doesn't work that way. So I really appreciated Cortez coming up and doing that today. But that was an example of how important it is."

Kennedy, 31, knows all about how tough it is to make the playoffs. In 1992, his third season in the league, he was the NFL Defensive Player of the Year when the Seahawks had a franchise-worst 2-14 record.

The Seahawks backed into the playoffs, losing 19-9 to the New York Jets on Sunday. Seattle secured a playoff spot when Kansas City lost in overtime to Oakland.

"I was saying, 'Please don't let me go in the tank again,' " Kennedy said after the game. "I've been in the tank 10 years, and I was just about to go in the tank again. But the Raiders pulled me out."

The Seahawks said Kennedy will give his $16,000 playoff bonus to the Jerome Brown and Payne Stewart foundations. Brown, a defensive tackle and Kennedy's teammate at University of Miami, died in a traffic accident in 1992, while Stewart died in a plane crash last year with Kennedy's agent, Robert Fraley.