9:35 AM Thu, Oct 02, 2008 | Permalink |
I've been thinking about that question as the Giants game nears. Road game + bye-week usually = loss for the Seahawks. Is it a mind game, like Holmgren expressed yesterday? Or is it jetlag? The Giants are just as bad coming off the bye, so I'll take that part out of the equation and simply look at how East and West Coast NFL teams are when they play on the opposite side of the country.
Let's take a look and see if the 12th Man gets an unseen advantage when the Giants or Buccanners or Redskins come to pacific standard time. Or if the Seahawks, Chargers or Niners fair as badly when they play in the eastern time zone. I'll exclude the Raiders because of Al Davis and look solely at the 2007 season. I'm using the NFL.com as source material.
West Coast teams first (I'll mark playoff games with a *). Last season the Chargers were 1-3, only winning againt the *Colts when headed to the east (NE, JAC, *NE). The Niners went 0-5 (PIT, NYG, ATL, CAR, CLE) and the Seahawks were nearly as bad, going 1-5 and winning only at Philadephia (PIT, CLE, CAR, ATL, *GB).
For the East Coast teams, a large part of the problem is the fact there are only four pacific standard teams (some eastern teams never even leave their time zone). So I'll bump it up to all the eastern teams that came west to find a more comparable win/loss percentage. Coming this way in 2007 the Bucs went 0-2 (SEA, SF), the Bengals 0-2 (SEA, SF), Cleveland 0-1 (ARI), Detroit 0-2 (ARI, SD), the Colts beat Oakland going 1-1 (SD), Pittsburgh 0-2 (ARI, DEN), Tampa Bay 0-2 (SEA, SF), and Washington 0-1 (*SEA).
This is hardly scientific, I'm simply looking at the long distance travel effect. Injuries and suspensions, etc, are not included in this. However, in 2007 eastern teams were a combined 1-13 when coming to pacific standard. When western teams went to the eastern zone, they were 2-13. On that simple basis, jetlag is a factor. How big, it's hard to say. It's also worth nothing that of the three combined wins, all were from teams that made the playoffs.
I'd be interested to know what the Hawks record is in 10 am start times as well. I can't remember the last time we beat a semi-solid team at that time slot. I do however, recall a bunch of times we came out flat as a pancake.