By Gregg Bell
McClatchy News Service
RENTON — The Road Warriors are heading into their biggest pothole.
Historic, unique, lively Lambeau Field in Green Bay has ultimately been only one thing to the Sea-hawks.
Where they go to lose.
Beating Philadelphia in Sunday’s NFC wild-card game improved the Seahawks (12-5) to 8-1 away from home this season. That’s the best road record in Seattle’s 44 seasons in the NFL.
“We really have found a rhythm [on the road] throughout the season, and we’ve had a lot of momentum. We had one mistake down late in the season when we didn’t get it done,” coach Pete Carroll said of the Seahawks’ 28-12 loss at the Los Angeles Rams in early December. “But other than that, we’ve found the way to play and the way to play together regardless of the setting and the fans and all the difficult environments that you are in, weather and whatever.
“These guys have really found it. And it’s really exciting to see. It’s just one week at a time, but there’s a real confidence about us.
“We don’t care where we play.”
That carefree attitude is essential this week. The Seahawks are playing the Packers (13-3) in Green Bay in the divisional playoffs Sunday.
They’ll also be playing their own ghosts of Wisconsin.
The Seahawks have lost eight consecutive games at Lambeau, including two in the playoffs. They last won at Green Bay on Nov. 1, 1999. That was on a Monday night, a hyped return game for former Packers Super Bowl-winning coach Mike Holmgren in his first season leading Seattle.
Since then, not only have the Seahawks lost every time in Green Bay, the games usually haven’t been close. The average score of those eight meetings has been Packers 33, Seattle 15.
It’s not just the stadium, the college-like venue in the middle of tree-lined streets and single-family homes that offer their front yards for game-day parking (with an extra charge if you want to use the house’s bathroom while you tailgate with your bratwurst and beer). It’s not just the Packers’ championship history. Or the Wisconsin weather. Or the rabid, well-primed Packer backers who go shirtless when it’s 10 degrees outside.
The Seahawks have also during their losing streak in Green Bay been running up against Aaron Rodgers and before that Brett Favre, a future Hall of Fame quarterback and a Hall of Famer.
Rodgers is 71-18-1 with 195 touchdowns, just 35 interceptions and a passer rating of 107.3 in his career during the regular season inside Lambeau.
He’s 10-7 overall in the playoffs, including a Super Bowl win in February 2011. But, curiously, Rodgers is only 3-2 in the playoffs at home.
His third postseason win was the Packers’ disputed, 26-21 victory over Dallas on Jan. 11, 2015, when Cowboys receiver Dez Bryant was ruled to not have caught a fourth-down pass to the goal line from Tony Romo with 4 minutes left.
Seattle has scored more than 20 points just once in its eight-game losing streak at Lambeau: a 33-27 loss in overtime to Favre’s Packers in the wild-card round on Jan. 4, 2004.
That was the famous day Matt Hasselbeck, Favre’s former backup in Green Bay, won the coin toss to begin OT. He then proclaimed loudly enough to be picked up by the referee’s on-field microphone and broadcast throughout the stadium and on national television: “We want the ball, and we are going to score!”
Moments later, Hasselbeck threw the season-ending interception the Packers returned for the winning touchdown.
Russell Wilson was a 15-year-old high-school kid in Virginia then. He soon graduated from North Carolina State with a year of football eligibility remaining. He played his final college football season at Wisconsin in Madison and led the Badgers to the 2012 Rose Bowl.
But up the road in Green Bay, Wilson hasn’t had nearly as rosy a time. He, like Carroll, is 0-3 there.
One of the worst games in his eight NFL seasons came at Lambeau Field. On Dec. 11, 2016, he threw a career-worst five interceptions as the Packers routed the Seahawks, 38-10.
The last time Seattle played a playoff game in Green Bay, Hasselbeck and the Seahawks jumped out to a 14-0 lead in a beautiful Lambeau snow globe 4 minutes into a divisional-round game on Jan. 12, 2008. Then Favre set his playoff career-high with three touchdown passes. The Packers plowed Seattle 42-6 over the final 56 minutes to send the Seahawks home from Dairyland losers yet again.
The early forecast for Sunday in Green Bay is for light snow in the morning, not a snow globe like that cool 2008 scene, accumulating an inch. Then, clearing for the early evening kickoff with temperatures in the 20s.
Wilson is taking the homecoming angle for this one.
“To go back to Wisconsin, that’s another home for me,” he said. “To go back there is going to great.
“It’s going to be cold. It’s going to be snowy, most likely. But it will be fun.
“We will prepare and get ready for that, and study the film and get ready to roll.”
