In addition to trying to figure out ways to cover kicks and protect his quarterback, Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll spent much of last week conducting pre-adaptation therapy against a disruption of his team’s circadian rhythms.
It may have seemed like he was merely telling his players they had to arrive, lift weights, meet and practice a lot earlier than normal, but there was science behind it.
The Seahawks are in Pittsburgh today for a kickoff that feels like a comfortable 1 p.m. to the Steelers and a crack-of-mid-morning 10 a.m. to the Seahawks.
A study by Italian scientists found that in young adults, the athletic efficiency was at least 20 percent higher in the afternoon than the morning because of brain-wave patterns, hormone production, cell regeneration and other biological activity linked to the daily cycle.
The Seahawks have won only once in their past 11 games in the Eastern time zone, with losses by an embarrassing average score of 30-161/2. Going back 10 seasons, they have sleepwalked to 12 losses in 20 such trips.
It is not just a problem for the Seahawks. In the 2008 season, for instance, five West Coast teams (including Arizona, Oakland, San Diego and San Francisco) won three of 20 games played in the East.
The quality of the teams can be argued, but consider that Arizona went 0-5 in the East during the 2008 regular season but advanced all the way to the Super Bowl before losing to Pittsburgh in a game played … in the Eastern time zone (Tampa, Fla.).
In Seattle’s best season, 2005, when the Seahawks finished 13-3 and advanced to the Super Bowl, they started out 2-2 with losses at Jacksonville and Washington.
A study by the Stanford University Sleep Disorders Clinic looked at the internal-clock issue in the opposite way, finding a significant advantage for West Coast teams over East Coast visitors in games played at night.
Studying 25 years of Monday Night Football games, it found that West Coast teams won more often by more points than East Coast teams, concluding the statistical results “support the presence of an enhancement of athletic performance at certain circadian times of day.”
Seahawks coaches have wrestled with road-game issues in varied ways for a long time.
Chuck Knox had his superstitions. If his team lost on the road, he would never stay in the same hotel the next time. That got to be problematic after seven consecutive losses in Kansas City left the Seahawks booked in a modest motel out on the highway.
Mike Holmgren was a very respectable 10-13 in Eastern time zone games in his first eight seasons with the Sea-hawks. But he nonetheless tinkered with the issue, at times leaving on Friday in an attempt to get acclimated. When that wasn’t productive, he tried to sneak up on the problem by leaving on Saturday just as they would for any West Coast trip.
When nothing seemed to work consistently, he decided the best thing to do would be to just stop talking about it and ignore it. And in his last two seasons, ’07 and ’08, the Hawks were 1-7 on the East Coast.
Carroll set out first thing on Monday trying to recalibrate the players’ body clocks by scheduling much of their daily work on East Coast time.
“They’re going to get a wake-up call at 6 a.m. West Coast time to go get ready for the football game, so all week long that’s what we dealt with,” Carroll said. “There’s some historical numbers that back up that it’s more difficult going that way so we’re going to try and right that. We’ve got three trips (against East Coast opponents) and they all have got to be huge games for us so this is a bit of an adjustment.”
Carroll said half the players are routinely in the building – alternating days – to lift weights by 7 a.m. anyway.
Last season, Carroll took the Seahawks into Chicago on Friday, and on Sunday they scored an upset win. So the Hawks left for Pittsburgh on Friday this time, and had a normal Saturday schedule of workouts conducted on East Coast time.
The two-touchdown point spread suggests the Steelers could be expected to win this game whether it was played at noon on the equator or midnight at the North Pole.
But it certainly reinforces a long-held NFL truism: You have to get up pretty early in the morning if you’re going to try to beat the Steelers in Pittsburgh.
Dave Boling: 253-597-8440 dave.boling@thenewstribune.com
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