The missing trophy

For those teams that failed, success the next season hasn't come easy

The sting of his team's Super Bowl loss had subsided, and Mike Holmgren was looking ahead. Only then, he realized the necessity of looking back.

As much as Holmgren desired to leave the Seattle Seahawks' 21-10 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XL behind, he fully understood its importance to the present. He knew he couldn't enter the 2006 season without addressing his team about the Super Bowl - specifically how the loser often slipped the next year.

"Our approach was that we knew everybody would be talking about it, and as it turned out the constant reminding of it was unbelievable," Holmgren recalled. "It's a very unusual thing."

In each of the five prior seasons, the losing team in the Super Bowl had followed up by missing the playoffs. None even had a winning record.

Realizing the "Curse of the Super Bowl loser" would be a hot topic that could distract his team, Holmgren first gathered his coaching staff and handed out a research assignment - he wanted details as to why those teams faltered.

Holmgren had strong feelings himself, having been on both sides of the Super Bowl ledger with Green Bay (beating the Patriots in XXXI, losing to the Broncos in XXXII), but it wasn't until his staff turned in its findings that his initial thoughts were reinforced.

"What we learned is that those teams didn't slip because they had been playing in the Super Bowl and had lost," said Holmgren. "It was because they got hurt. Maybe there was a coaching change. It was the same type of stuff that every team deals with every year, whether they were in the Super Bowl or not."

This is perfectly applicable to the 2008 New England Patriots, who were stunned by the Giants in last season's championship game. Could the Patriots join the majority of recent Super Bowl losers who fell on hard times the following season?

Holmgren isn't sure of the answer, but he feels quite certain about one thing: If the Patriots do slip, it won't be because they lost the Super Bowl.

"More than anything else, I believed it was hocus-pocus," Holmgren asserted. "It's just like being on the cover of Madden. Sure, there is a statistical argument for it, but I don't think that's what it is at all."

"No one goes into it thinking they'll slip like that," said former St. Louis Rams running back Marshall Faulk, reflecting on the Rams' drop from 14-2 in the 2001 season - which concluded with a stunning 20-17 loss to the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVI - to a 7-9 record the next year. "But when you don't make the playoffs, you come out of it thinking, 'That can be the only thing that's wrong.' I don't think we ever recovered from it."

Faulk believes such emotional scars can run deep.

"It's different trying to get a team up to play when not only did they lose the game, but it was that game, the last game," he said. "All the highlights from that game continue to run, and you just hear about it constantly."

Factors in failure

Even Holmgren acknowledges that, on the surface, there appears to be credence to the Super Bowl hangover theory because "you look and see a long list of teams, and it didn't happen for them."

Holmgren's Seahawks broke the streak in 2006, winning the NFC West at 9-7, but last season, the Bears (7-9) fell victim. So six of the last seven Super Bowl losers have been sub-.500 the next season, and seven of the last nine.

"Last year I was hit with those questions and I talked about how it wouldn't happen to us," Bears coach Lovie Smith said. "But it happened to us."

Smith isn't quite sure why the Bears took such a dive - instability and poor play at quarterback seemed to be primary factors - and he now jokes that he's glad he won't have to answer the "Curse of the Super Bowl loser" questions.

"We're out of that group now," he cracked. "Now I'm interested in a team that lost the Super Bowl, didn't make the playoffs the next year, then came back and won it the next."

As Holmgren's study attests, a closer look at each Super Bowl loser revealed deeper problems than a simple hangover effect.

The 2001 Giants, for example, had a run of injuries in the preseason.

The 2002 Rams lost quarterback Kurt Warner to a broken finger, handicapping "The Greatest Show on Turf" for half the season.

The 2003 Raiders were an aging team, and quarterback Rich Gannon, the reigning league MVP, appeared in only seven games.

The 2004 Panthers lost star receiver Steve Smith to a season-ending injury in the opening game. Running backs Stephen Davis, DeShaun Foster, and defensive tackle Kris Jenkins also were lost for the year.

The 2005 Eagles were without quarterback Donovan McNabb for seven games, and it didn't help that Terrell Owens was tearing the team apart with poor behavior.

So as the Seahawks entered the 2006 season, Holmgren laid the details out to his club.

"I said 'Listen, you're going to hear this, you're going to read this, you're going to get asked about this, and really there is no magic trick to this, no curse if you will. The season will be determined by what every season is determined by - how well you play, how well you prepare, turnovers, injuries, the same stuff that has always determines winners and losers in football for years and years and years. This Super Bowl stuff means nothing. There is no way we shouldn't make the playoffs.' "

The Seahawks battled the injury bug that season, with quarterback Matt Hasselbeck missing four games, and running back and reigning league MVP Shaun Alexander missing six. That contributed to what Holmgren called a "grinder of a season."

Still, the Seahawks plowed through, and while detractors might point out that they benefited from playing in a watered-down division, Seattle nearly shocked the top-seeded Bears in the divisional round of the playoffs.

Unlike Holmgren's approach from 2006, however, Patriots coach Bill Belichick said he hasn't invested time to examine teams coming off a Super Bowl loss.

"I think it's a fair question, but it is not one I have a great answer to; I haven't studied teams who haven't done well after they lost the Super Bowl," he said.

"I think we'll do what's best for our team, whether we won the game, or lost it. I don't think it's a motivating factor in our decision-making. I think some of the things we looked at last year, we might do a little bit differently - not a lot differently - but hopefully those will help our attack."

Lingering memories

Theories vary as to why Super Bowl losers struggle the following season, but Jim Fassel, the Giants' coach from 1997-2003, believes one of the primary pitfalls is losing a mental edge.

"There can sometimes be a feeling that just because you made it, it's going to fall right back into your lap," he said. "I remember for us, I tried not to make a big to-do about it. I didn't try to bury the memory [of the Giants' loss to Baltimore in Super Bowl XXXV], but it was more of a business-as-usual type of thing."

Holmgren agrees with Fassel, although he took a slightly different approach by attacking the issue head-on.

"The one thing that is tough to evaluate - and we talked directly to our people about it - is that you can't feel as though you've arrived," he said. "Whether you win or lose, playing in a Super Bowl is a remarkable accomplishment and it would be easy to get to the offseason and take a deep breath."

Such problems shouldn't necessarily be a factor for the Patriots, who have played in four Super Bowls the last seven seasons.

But Faulk, now an analyst for the NFL Network, pointed out a few other issues he believed hurt his the Rams in 2002.

He said Super Bowl teams often lose key players who might be overvalued by other clubs in free agency, that they are sometimes more likely to suffer injuries coming off a longer season, and that - perhaps most importantly - the emotional carry-over from such a painful loss can linger.

In that regard, Faulk sees similarities between the '02 Rams and '08 Patriots.

"We felt like we shouldn't have lost that game, and it was just a shocker," he said. "Looking back, I don't think we ever recovered because the feeling was 'There was no way we lost to that team.' When I look at the Giants last year, I think that's exactly what happened to the Patriots.

"So you're sort of in the middle. If you keep looking back, you can get caught in a tailspin. But if you don't think about what happened, you might forget where you came from and what got you there. With that in mind, I think this is going to be the toughest year Bill Belichick has had a coach. It's uncommon ground."

Perhaps Faulk is right, that the emotions will hit harder than the Patriots anticipate. Or maybe it's closer to what Holmgren suggests, that all the talk about Super Bowl losers is a bunch of hocus-pocus.

How will the Patriots respond to their crushing loss in Super Bowl XLII?

That question ultimately will define the team's 2008 season.

Mike Reiss can be reached at mreiss@globe.com.