A bit of a perspective. So how much more do we travel ?.....

[Rainger]

I only wish studies like this could get published in the main stream sports sites.

ESPN and other sites go out of their way to not discuss it of try to say it is over blown.

We need to find a main stream journalist that will write and article like this and get it on the front pages of SI ESPN FOX and PFT.

Great work.

PS: we here at .NET have known this all along. We also are not complaining only showing the factual truth that others wish to ignore. The Hawks are going to prove that even with this disadvantage that they are the best team in the NFL making their SB even that much bigger of a deal. Go Hawks.

 

[themunn]

San Francisco had five 10 AM starts last season and went to the Super Bowl, including beating Atlanta on the road in the playoffs, something we failed to do.

No excuses.

Actually they had 3 games at 10am, at Minnesota, at New York Jets and at St Louis.
And they lost 2 of them (and thumped the Jets, but how difficult is that?

We had 5.
At St Louis, at Detroit, at Miami, at Chicago and at Atlanta.
We won 1.

Surely that's evidence enough that arguably the best 2 teams in the league lost 6 out of 8 10am starts.

Seattle and San Francisco in games that kicked off after 10am PD/ST - 23-5-1
Seattle and San Francisco in games that kicked off at 10am PD/ST - 2-6


If that doesn't convince you that there's a disadvantage for west coast teams playing the early game, nothing will

Furthermore, when you consider that 2 of the losses that came in games played after 10am were AGAINST each other, the result is even more obvious.

Exclude that, and the record is:

Not 10am 21-3-1
10am 2-6

 

[rjdriver]

I agree, no excuses. We just need to be that much better. To be fair the NFC championship started at 3:00PM Eastern, not 10:00AM

Man, this drives me nuts, lol. After you've slept a night it's not a 10am start anymore!

Roland, I follow you. I also agree, I'm not too convinced of "jet lag". I fly 6-8 hours a day for four days in a row, and usually feel great. However, I'm a believer in circadian rhythm and sleep patterns.

When I travel east after having been in the west coast and am given a 5:00AM work show the next day, I feel it. Not because of jet lag, but because I can't go to bed at 6PM "my time" to get the rest I need to wake up at 2AM "my time". I struggle with those morning and usually don't feel myself til later in the afternoon.

I don't pretend to know an NFL gameday routine, but I would assume for a 1PM game, you probably get to the stadium at 10:00AM. That means leaving at 9:30ish and meeting for breakfast at 8:30 or so (again, total speculation). That probably means getting up at about 7AM or so. That's 4AM pacific time. Would that affect you? I have no idea, but I am just saying, anecdotally, based on my own experience, it does. Of course, when you start adding other variables such as a Friday arrival and such, it probably changes everything.

This wasn't meant as an excuse thread, just an answer to my own curious question to figure out how much more we actually do travel than another, more centrally located team. I agree that good teams win on the road and bad team lose. However, I do believe that it is a statistical certainty that any and every teams odds of winning are decreased when they travel from the Pacific time zone to the Eastern time zone compared to if they had an away game in their own time zone. Notice I didn't say BECAUSE of the travel, could be for a myriad of reasons, but it historically, that is the data. We will never know the answer, the only way to know would be to have the same teams play the same year, once at 1PM and once at 4PM, and compile data over an extended period of time. Since that can never happen, I'm a fan of doing everything you can to mitigate the affects (real or not). Go a day early. Practice a few hours earlier during the week. What's great is that we have leaders on this team that will have this team ready and prepared.





A

 

[rjdriver]

San Francisco had five 10 AM starts last season and went to the Super Bowl, including beating Atlanta on the road in the playoffs, something we failed to do.

No excuses.

Actually they had 3 games at 10am, at Minnesota, at New York Jets and at St Louis.
And they lost 2 of them (and thumped the Jets, but how difficult is that?

We had 5.
At St Louis, at Detroit, at Miami, at Chicago and at Atlanta.
We won 1.

Surely that's evidence enough that arguably the best 2 teams in the league lost 6 out of 8 10am starts.

Seattle and San Francisco in games that kicked off after 10am PD/ST - 23-5-1
Seattle and San Francisco in games that kicked off at 10am PD/ST - 2-6


If that doesn't convince you that there's a disadvantage for west coast teams playing the early game, nothing will

Furthermore, when you consider that 2 of the losses that came in games played after 10am were AGAINST each other, the result is even more obvious.

Exclude that, and the record is:

Not 10am 21-3-1
10am 2-6

Wow.

(me nodding head)

 

[Kryten]

If 10am starts were a problem, you'd think we'd have started out slowly in our two east coast playoff games.

 

[RichNhansom]

San Francisco had five 10 AM starts last season and went to the Super Bowl, including beating Atlanta on the road in the playoffs, something we failed to do.

No excuses.

Damn you apparently don't follow football.
The Niners had three 10:00am (or early starts) games last year, not 5. Their games against the two toughest opponents were moved to later time slots. In the three remaking games against the Rams, Vikings and Jets )all who were considered cream puff teams at the time the schedule was being made) they lost two of those. The only 10:00am game they won was against the Jets.

Would they have beaten NE or GB at 10:00am? Its pretty unlikely considering they couldn't even beat the Rams or Vikings and a loss to either drops them to the 5 seed.

Like was said also the Atlanta game was an afternoon game and another ypu could question if they started at 10:00am like actually we did and they barely won that game.

 

[SoulfishHawk]

Whatever can be done to screw the Hawks on road schedule, it will happen. Death, Taxes, and this....

 

[RolandDeschain]

Roland, I follow you. I also agree, I'm not too convinced of "jet lag". I fly 6-8 hours a day for four days in a row, and usually feel great. However, I'm a believer in circadian rhythm and sleep patterns.

You should find this to be of great interest, then: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2 ... the-brain/

Also, I can't find the link at the moment but I'll keep looking, some scientists put people in barometric chambers and set them to various air pressures, and once people got to 5,000' and more, (and especially at 8,000'), they started getting jet lag symptoms; while simply sitting still in barometric chambers, not traveling 10 feet much less across time zones.

 

[Vandelay]

According to NFL.com 2013's list of total miles traveling through the season. Usually Oakland is in the top 5 every year. Over the past 10 seasons, the 49ers and Hawks own 7 of the most traveled seasons. Seahawks a bunch of 10am games but the 49ers destroy everyone in miles traveled.

1. San Francisco 32,948 miles
2. San Diego 26,932
3. Oakland 26,240
4. Seattle 23,914 20.
5. Arizona 20,620 21.
6. Jacksonville 19,686
7. Minnesota 17,174
8. Houston 16,716
9. Denver 16,506
10. Philadelphia 15,932
11. Pittsburgh 15,502
12. Dallas 15,460
13. Kansas City 15,378
14. Indianapolis 15,180
15. Miami 15,150
16. New Orleans 14,510
17. Carolina 14,278
18. Tennessee 14,238
19. Tampa Bay 14,186
20. St. Louis 13,616
21. Washington 13,578
22. Atlanta 12,952
23. New England 12,024
24. New York Giants 10,944
25. Buffalo 10,572
26. Baltimore 9,306
27. Cincinnati 9,020
28. New York Jets 8,422
29. Cleveland 7,226
30. Green Bay 6,190
31. Chicago 4,898
32. Detroit 4,202

 

[RolandDeschain]

That's because they have a London game this year, Vandelay.

 

[SeaTown81]

Those travel distances help boost our home field advantage too, so it's not all bad. But yeah, it's not a mystery why our team has such extreme home/road splits.

This is kind of a half truth though. Anyone who travels a lot will tell you that traveling west to east is far more taxing than east to west. East to west travel is nothing, really. West to east is brutal.

It may seem like a small thing, but simply acclimating yourself to proper sleeping hours can be incredibly difficult. Let's say you're used to going to bed at 10pm (PST), that's 1am. Then, instead of having a game at 1pm (PST), as far as your body is concerned it's 10am. So what time do you think wake up call is? Even for a "1pm" game? 9am?

That potentially represents a significant loss of sleep, and every trainer and doctor will tell you that more and more studies are indicating that sleep alone might be the single most important thing that any athlete can do for their body.

What is potentially lost traveling east to west? I can't think of a single thing.

This right here.

Plus I don't see teams having to travel a couple extra hours adding too much to our HFA. Other west coast teams don't all have such success at home. I really don't think the far traveling is a big deal on a single week basis as much as it is one of totality. It's the sum of all of the traveling, not the single games.

 

[Vandelay]

Oh absolutley, but they still led the league last year with 29,212 round trip miles and also led in 2010 with 33,264 with the Hawks traveling 23,122. I just dont subscribe to all the argument of who has to wake up earlier and the whole travel thing. ITs such a cop out and a never ending arguement.

 

[SoulfishHawk]

Yeah, because one team having 5 games at 10am, and the other having just 2 is "fair"
:roll:

 

[Kixkahn]

Interesting stats... I found it interesting when I saw our schedule that the higher rated teams were the ones we played on the road. Now mind you there is no way to know if the teams ranked high at the end of last season is any good this year.

 

[SeaTown81]

Here's something that the "traveling is an overrated excuse" often gloss over. It's not just the Hawks having to travel more than other teams, and having to fly cross country. It's about how easy many of the teams back East have it. For many of the Northeastern teams a good deal of their games are the equivalent of the Hawks traveling to Portland, Vancouver, Olympia, etc. This isn't just a matter of not having to adjust your body clock, spend time of planes, etc. It's almost no different than playing in their home stadium.

Oh, and the icing on the cake. That the NFL and Roger "NY Giants fan as a kid" Goodell instituted a rule a few years back that limits the amount of times East coast teams have to travel out West. The teams that barely have to travel have a rule making it so they are never inconvenienced. REALLY?!?!?! How this is allowed is beyond me. Oh, I know. The league, commish, media, and most of the teams are based back East. It's really absurd.

 

[ronnieboycefanclub]

In the original figures, the Bears @ Tampa game in 2011 was played in London not Tampa. The figures require re calculation, the airport used is London Heathrow.

 

[SoulfishHawk]

Good point SeaTown. When you look at a U.S. Map that shows the location of every team etc. There are a ton of teams in that Northern corner of the East Coast that are very close. Not nearly as hard to win games that are an hour flight from where you play. Compared to the Hawks flying 6 hours to an East Coast game.

 

[RolandDeschain]

It may seem like a small thing, but simply acclimating yourself to proper sleeping hours can be incredibly difficult.

Noooooooooo! It's not! It just takes a LITTLE foresight.

When I need to get up really early on a particular morning, here's what I do. Two nights BEFORE, I purposely stay up late and get less sleep than I need to feel good and refreshed. This causes me to be tired in the morning, and I chug a 5-hour energy bottle to compensate. That night, I get tired early because I had less sleep the previous night, and I have no problem going to sleep a couple hours earlier than normal. Then I wake up on the morning I need to be up early on feeling nice and refreshed because I got a FULL night's sleep due to being able to fall asleep earlier the night before.

THERE IS NOT A PERSON IN THE WORLD THAT CANNOT DO THAT! IT WORKS! It just takes a TINY bit of foresight! If I were an NFL player, that is EXACTLY what I would do, because I've done this probably 75 times in my life and it works beautifully.

I am so tired of this whole "jet lag is an inescapable beast and you just have to accept the horrible consequences" mindset. Give me a break. Human beings are surprisingly resilient and adaptable.

 

[samwize77]

Roland, you're joking right? Are you seriously saying everyones internal clock will operate just like yours? Really? Just how is that? And this goes for highly trained athletes also?
I don't want to sound like I'm attacking the poster here, I'm not, but I have to question the poster about his post. It just seems so "out there". I'm under the understanding that everyone is different and will react in different situations in different ways. I suppose "as a group" the team can do as much as it can to acclimate to the travel. But beyond that its an "individual" thing. Some react better to schedule changes than others. I have to go along with the win/loss statistics here. But hey Roland, maybe contact the trainers and let them know about the way you do it. If it helps, I'm all for it my friend!! Go Hawks!

 

[SoulfishHawk]

I work shift work, so no such thing. Love my job, hate the fact that sometimes I get stuck working Graves for a quarter, or Swing. Brutal