Seahawks looking to solve road woes

The road back home begins in Buffalo, N.Y., three time zones to the east and more than 3,000 miles away from Seattle.

On the opposite side of the country, hard up against the Canadian border, the Seahawks start their season with a stiff eye-opener, waking up to just the kind of road game that caught up to Seattle last season.

The Seahawks were 1-4 in games played in the Eastern time zone in 2007, and that fact more than any other is why they ended up in Green Bay the second week of the playoffs, getting snowplowed by the Packers instead of hosting a divisional playoff game.

"It cost us with our home-field advantage," linebacker Lofa Tatupu said of last season's road struggles. "Whatever it is, we've got to figure it out. And we've got to figure it out quick, because as it is, we start out on the road."

The Seahawks have been one of the league's best teams at home over the past five seasons and downright average on the road. Last season, they were downright schizophrenic because the same defense that hammered opponents at Qwest Field hemorrhaged points on the road.

The Seahawks gave up six points or fewer in four of their eight home games, yet surrendered 33 points to Cleveland in November and allowed 44 to Atlanta in December. The same Seattle defense that knocked Tampa Bay's Jeff Garcia silly in the 2007 opener got KO'd by backups like Carolina's Matt Moore and Atlanta's Chris Redman on the road. The Seahawks might have lost to Philadelphia, too, had A.J. Feeley not been so insistent upon throwing the ball to Tatupu repeatedly.

A discrepancy between home and road is hardly unique. Two-thirds of the teams in the league allowed fewer points at home than on the road last season.

It's the size of Seattle's disparity that stood out. Seattle ranked No. 2 in the NFC in scoring defense at home, No. 11 on the road.

Seattle hasn't won on the road against a team that ended up in the playoffs since 2004, and the Seahawks have won only one road playoff game in franchise history — and that was back in 1983. Seattle's chance to advance in the playoffs may depend on the ability to change one of those facts.

"We need to go on the road, be road warriors and give ourselves a chance maybe to have a better seed or to get some of those byes," safety Brian Russell said.

The coaches spent nearly a month this offseason studying the reasons behind the defense's split personality. The results of that clinical diagnosis, however, are subject to coaching confidentiality.

"Those are in-house answers, but it was very much addressed," said John Marshall, Seattle's defensive coordinator. "We spent probably three to four weeks analyzing those games. And that analysis has been presented to the defensive unit."

Leave it to coach Mike Holmgren, then, to provide a quick sketch.

"On the road, when we got shocked — either by a big play or a bad thing happened or whatever — it took us a while to recover," Holmgren said.

The Seahawks were able to shrug off those haymakers at home. Plays like Tampa Bay's 49-yard completion to Joey Galloway in the season opener or T.J. Houshmandzadeh's 35-yard touchdown catch in Week 3 against Cincinnati.

"At home, where you have the energy of your crowd and all that, if something bad happened, boom, forget it," Holmgren said. "Boom, you're on to the next play.

"We recovered much better."

The RPMs of defensive players were also higher at home, an important factor for a defense whose strength is its speed.

Add in the fact that the din of Seattle's home crowd makes it hard for opposing offensive linemen to hear the quarterback's signals, and the Seahawks pass rush had a split-second head start. Seattle averaged 3.6 sacks at home and just two on the road.

"The defensive side of the ball is a lot more emotional," said defensive end Patrick Kerney. "There's no doubt about that. With our fans, that probably helps us play out of our minds a little bit. Things with adrenaline and energy that we couldn't do without them.

"It's a matter of finding that emotion on the road, finding that energy."

And while the Seahawks' home crowd certainly provides an advantage in Seattle, safety Deon Grant said the 12th Man's absence doesn't entirely explain last season's results on the road.

"A few times, we weren't ourselves," Grant said. "We didn't play our defense. It didn't have anything to do with the crowd.

"We have to look at being a shut-down defense, regardless if we're at home or if we're away, and we didn't have that mentality all of the time last year."

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