What happened to Seahawks’ homefield advantage at Lumen Field?

Oct 29, 2024, 11:10 AM

Seattle Sports

One of the biggest advantages the Seattle Seahawks have had for well over a decade appears to be fading way.

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The Seahawks suffered one of their worst home losses in recent history on Sunday, falling 31-10 to the Buffalo Bills. The 21 points was the largest margin of defeat at home since the infamous 42-7 blowout defeat against the Rams in 2017 and the seventh-worst margin since Lumen Field opened in 2002.

Seattle has now last three straight and is 2-3 at home this season. After posting 12 straight seasons of .500 or better records at home from 2009-20, the team is in danger of its second losing season at home in the past four years.

Sunday’s loss to the Bills was the second straight home game where Lumen Field was filled with an unusually high number of opposing fans, which Seahawks players noticed.

“Their fans traveled well,” quarterback Geno Smith said in a postgame press conference. “It was real loud in there, kind of felt like we were on the road at times.”

Smith’s comments caught the attention of plenty of national media members and former NFL players, including former longtime Rams defensive lineman Chris Long.

“Seattle used to be a tough place to play, like it really did,” Long said on The Green Light Podcast. “I don’t know if it’s the same anymore, but I just know it used to be (very difficult). It used to be (very difficult) to play there.”

During Long’s eight years in the NFC West with the Rams, the Seahawks were 42-22 at home, including a three-season stretch from 2012-14 where they went 22-2. But Seattle is just 26-21 at home since he retired following the 2018 season.

With the Seahawks’ homefield advantage seemingly slipping away, Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk tried to figure out what’s going on at Lumen Field.

“I noticed the same thing when San Francisco was here a couple of weeks ago for Thursday Night Football,” Mike Salk said Tuesday. “There was a lot of red in the building, and then just asking people who were there the other day, it sounds like there were a lot of Bills fans just like there were a lot of Niners fans. Is this becoming a problem?”

Where have the 12s gone?

Salk offered a few theories on why the homefield advantage at Lumen Field could be waning.

“I think teams are understanding how to travel better. That’s one,” Salk said. “Two, while the noise can be problematic for the offensive communicate, defenses have to communicate in their own way and maybe it’s a challenge for defenses to communicate – maybe not as much as offenses, but more than it used to be given the complexities of defensive schemes these days.

“The third has nothing to do with any of it. It’s just a simple technology argument, which is (that) it has just gotten much easier to buy tickets to opposing games, not just here in Seattle but anywhere. It used to be, ‘Hey, I wanna fly from Buffalo to Seattle for the weekend.’ Cool. How are you gonna get tickets? Either you know somebody or it’s a sketchy (web)site or you gotta go deal with the scalper and the sketchiness and sort of uncertainty of that. Not a great experience. Now there’s like 100 different websites you can go to and have your tickets be guaranteed.”

Former NFL quarterback Brock Huard pointed out that the Bills’ fanbase in particular is one that’s known for traveling well, and that the Seahawks themselves gave Buffalo fans plenty to be loud about on Sunday.

“Bills Mafia travels as well as anybody and believe in their team and had a chance to go out to Seattle for the first time in a decade,” Huard said. “And if you have season ticket holders who want to sell their tickets, they’re gonna be enough Buffalo people wanting to get out of there and come experience this. And oh by the way, when you fuel them and you let them get ahead and are up on you 21-3, I think those are some of the moments Geno was talking about. I don’t think it’s from the jump at all, but you let that game get out of hand and get out of control, their fans are going to make some noise and they did.

“Honestly, listening to that I’m not bothered by Geno saying that. I don’t feel like he’s throwing the 12s under the bus. I think he’s just (saying) very matter of fact … there were times it felt like a road game in there and that has a lot to do with us.”

Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald had a similar view about the way his team gave Bills fans a reason to make some noise.

“We gotta win, period. Opposing fans won’t want to show up if we’re consistently kicking butt and doing what we’re supposed to do,” Macdonald said after Sunday’s loss. “… Our fans I think are doing a great job and they’re sticking with us all the way through at the end of the game. I know we’re fighting and they’re fighting with us, and we have to do a better job of putting a product out there that they want to really root hard for.”

Salk wondered if that lack of success combined with the demand for tickets in the Seahawks’ glory years in the 2010s could be having an impact.

“This is more of a theory, and take it for what it is. But could the Seahawks be in kind of that exact danger zone where you’re coming off a decade-plus of dynastic performance, where there’s fervor around the team, everybody wants to go to games, supply (and) demand dictates that the prices for everything goes up – not just for the tickets but the parking and the concessions. Everything just ramps up and up because there’s such a fervor, there’s such a passion, there’s such an interest in it,” Salk said. “… And especially where inflation is at and everything else, sure, maybe that plays a pretty big role here for a team that is on the back end of something.”

Listen to the full conversation at this link or in the audio player in this story. Tune in to Brock and Salk weekdays from 6-10 a.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app.