2008 Game Start Times

One thing just jumped out at me about the Seahawks 2008 schedule: For having to play the AFC East and the NFC East, the dreaded 10 am pacific start-time effect may not be that bad this year. Consider:

• Games at Buffalo and NY Giants in weeks 1 and 5 occur when routines may be slightly off - start of the season and after a bye week. (Counter pointer: Holmgren teams start slow (Detroit in '06) and typically don't fair well following a bye).
• The game at Tampa (week 7) is the NFC Sunday Night Football game, thus no early start.
• If you had to pick a team to play at 10 am, you'd probably want a crappy team like Miami, such as the Seahawks play in 10.
• The Thanksgiving game at Dallas (week 13) is the late game (or middle game, if you have the NFL network), meaning a routine 1pm start.
• The last 10 am game is week 15 at St. Louis. Seattle should be fighting for playoff position at this point, plus the Rams are a rival, so you figure the Seahawks have extra motivation to get up for this game.

I'm not sure how valid all of this reasoning is, but I can say this: the schedule definitely could have been worse. I'm especially happy that the game at Tampa is a night game, as the Hawks will need as much help as possible to pull out a road victory there (and possibly go 2-1, rather than 1-2, in their second three games, which would be an incredible start).