Hawks look to elbow grease to prevent a Super hangover

Maybe it was four days after the Pro Bowl that Lofa Tatupu showed up at the Seahawks' weight room.

Could have been it was only three.

Seahawks president Tim Ruskell didn't mark it on a calendar so he can't be sure. He just knows that about halfway through Tatupu's first week off in seven months, the Seahawks linebacker was at team headquarters for a workout.

So next week's season opener in Detroit isn't the first step in Seattle's attempt to return to the Super Bowl. The journey actually started in February.

"We know how we got there, and it was through hard work," Tatupu said. "We can't afford not to. We're a targeted team now."

Maybe even an endangered species. The past seven teams to lose the Super Bowl lost their regular-season opener the following season. The past five Super Bowl losers didn't make it back to the postseason the next season.

The Seahawks aren't denying that history, they're seeking to defy it.

"We've not ignored that," Ruskell said. "We said, 'If that's true, then let's not follow the same pattern.' "

There are plenty of theories for why teams have struggled the season after a Super Bowl loss. The drain of extra playoff games. The delay in offseason planning for everything from free agency to the draft. Problem with those theories is that teams that win the Super Bowl face the same hurdles, but haven't found the same hindrance.

No team has made the playoffs the year after a Super Bowl loss since Tennessee in 2000. Some have collapsed late like Philadelphia did last season, losing eight of its final 10 games. Others have flat-lined earlier like Carolina, which lost seven of its first eight in 2004.

The only constant has been a recurring inability to return to the playoffs. The superstitious would say it's a jinx. The more rigidly analytical assessment is it's a relatively recent historical phenomenon. Tatupu calls it a mystery.

"I don't have an explanation," he said.

It's the response to the success last season that the Seahawks are working on. That's why Tatupu was in the weight room less than a week after his longest football season. It's the reason Grant Wistrom underwent shoulder surgery fewer than two weeks after the Super Bowl, so he could be ready for the regular season. And it's why the team had the most players ever participate in offseason conditioning as the Seahawks put their shoulders into the recent history of Super Bowl losers and push in the opposite direction.

Playing catch-up

When St. Louis lost to New England in the Super Bowl four years ago, Wistrom headed to Hawaii. He went months without looking at a football.

"Physically it takes its toll on you," Wistrom said of a Super Bowl loss. "Mentally, it takes its toll."

He had plans after this year's Super Bowl, too. He got married a week after the game, and then several days after the ceremony he underwent surgery to repair his shoulder. It was the only way he could recover in time to play in the regular season.

A Super Bowl run cuts into a team's recovery time. When training camp began, six players who started last season were still coming back from surgery: Wistrom, Rocky Bernard, Darrell Jackson, Jerramy Stevens, Michael Boulware and Marcus Tubbs.

Injuries are the great unknown in an NFL season, and a theme for recent Super Bowl losers. One snap of the ball, a pop of the knee, and the direction of a season can change.

The Raiders lost Rich Gannon after seven games in 2003. Steve Smith suffered a broken leg in Carolina's 2004 season opener. Last season, Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb went out after nine games, and Terrell Owens didn't play the final two months because the team diagnosed him with a sprained attitude.

"They didn't have any of their horses," Seahawks center Robbie Tobeck said of the Eagles.

He knows the feeling. He played for the Falcons when they went to the Super bowl, losing to Denver 34-19 in Super Bowl XXXIII. Running back Jamal Anderson carried the ball 410 times in 1998, an NFL record. He suffered a season-ending knee injury in the second regular-season game the next year, and the Falcons went 5-11.

"What happened was we lost some guys," Tobeck said. "That's what affected our team. It wasn't attitude. Guys still worked as hard. Guys still did as much stuff."

The price of success

Two years ago, safety Marquand Manuel was driving a minivan full of his stuff away from Cincinnati, waived by the Bengals and uncertain if he had an NFL future until the Seahawks signed him. Last March, he got a $10 million contract offer from Green Bay that included a $2 million signing bonus after he had filled in capably for Ken Hamlin.

A year ago, the Seahawks were one of the only teams in the NFL to offer Joe Jurevicius a job. This year, he had his pick, choosing to play for his hometown franchise in Cleveland and accepting less money than the Seahawks offered.

Then, guard Steve Hutchinson signed an offer sheet that was the largest ever given to a guard and engineered so the Seahawks wouldn't match it.

Success doesn't breed contempt in the NFL so much as competition. Opponents come to poach championship teams. In 2004, Carolina lost three of its five starting offensive linemen in the offseason.

But so much time was spent analyzing what Seattle lost that first week of free agency, it overshadowed what they had: spending room. That made Seattle different from other teams that have lost the Super Bowl. The Seahawks had room to grow, and on the very day that Hutchinson's departure became official, they agreed to terms with linebacker Julian Peterson. They signed wide receiver Nate Burleson away from Minnesota.

But it was shortly after that the real work began: Eighty percent of the roster attended the Seahawks' offseason conditioning program, a high-water mark for the Holmgren era and indicative of a shift in culture that took years to accomplish. Attendance was as low as 45 percent early in his tenure. Now?

"With the way the team is going, I think the feeling there is to be there, and be a part of this thing," Holmgren said.

Elbow grease. That was the prescription to fight the complacency Holmgren said can afflict a team that reaches the Super Bowl.

"You kind of lose your focus just a little bit," he said. "You figure, 'Well, we got there once, we'll get there again.' You kind of forgot all it took to get there."

Holmgren began training camp in Cheney by talking to his players about what had happened to other teams that lost the Super Bowl. And he brought up the same subject after the final workout at Eastern Washington as Seahawks began looking to the season that lies ahead with an eye on the recent past.

Danny O'Neil: 206-464-2364 or doneil@seattletimes.com.