RENTON — The Seattle Seahawks learned a few hard lessons in the 11 months between winning a Super Bowl and returning to the postseason as the NFC’s top seed for the second straight year.

The most important of those lessons might have been this: Until you’ve been a defending champion, you don’t really know how to handle being a defending champion.

Throughout the offseason and training camp, Seahawks players and head coach Pete Carroll said over and over again that nothing would change now that they had hoisted the Lombardi Trophy, collected their diamond-encrusted rings and become a lot more famous — and in many cases wealthy — than they were at the same time a year earlier.

The Super Bowl was last season, they said, we’ve moved onto this year, they insisted.

Well it turns out some of that was a little easier said than done.

“I think it is a little bit of a different challenge,” quarterback Russell Wilson said. “I don’t think it should be a different challenge, but I think it is a different challenge.”

The Seahawks season started off just fine, with Seattle winning its opener against the Green Bay Packers, then bouncing back from a loss in San Diego with a win over Denver.

But then things started getting tough for the defending champs. They lost at home to Dallas, a game that was followed by the shocking decision to trade Percy Harvin, then they lost again at St. Louis to fall to 3-3.

Suddenly the champs were vulnerable, there was drama in the form of multiple reports of locker room unrest, of Marshawn Lynch butting heads with his coaches, of Russell Wilson not being “black enough” in the eyes of some teammates.

There may not have been a full-blown Super Bowl hangover, but the Seahawks at least had a bit of a headache and could use a glass of water. It turned out that in enjoying the amazing season they had last season, the Seahawks might have lost touch with how tough the road was to get there.

“I hate to keep going back to last year, but we did win the Super Bowl last year, and through that process at the end of the season, when you go through the parade and you get the ceremony and the ring, it makes you forget how difficult it was to get to that point, to reach the mountain top,” receiver Doug Baldwin said.

“So I think a lot of that pressure we had at the beginning of the season when we were 3-3, from the media, from ourselves, we kind of let that feed into the negativity and forgot that it wasn’t easy last year.”

Or as defensive end Cliff Avril described it: “It was just guys getting out of their own way more so than anything. There’s a lot that comes with being a Super Bowl champ, from making more money off the field to different appearances and things like that. Once guys got that out of their system and got focused, we got back to what makes us us, and that’s what’s been showing up the last few weeks.”

To their credit, however, the Seahawks eventually used those tough times as a rallying point rather than a reason to fall apart. And in a now-famous team meeting following a Week 11 loss in Kansas City, players cleared the air and were able to get back to being the team they had hoped to be all along.

“I think every team is faced with it every year,” Carroll said of his team having to rediscover its chemistry. “It’s not just — you’ve got it and you have it from now on. You have to get connected to reach in to bring out your best, and those around you really help draw that.

“There’s greater power in a group, and as you stand alone, you can only go so far, but when you mix and you interact and create the inspiration for other people — it’s all of that; that’s where the great power comes from.”

That’s not a new lesson for the Seahawks; it’s what Carroll has been preaching from day one since he came to Seattle. But knowing it and living it aren’t always the same, even when it comes from an NBA legend like Bill Russell, who addressed the team earlier this year.

“He spoke very carefully about team and what the important aspects of understanding of how to play at your best and he talked about loving your teammates,” Carroll said. “It couldn’t be more true. We heard it, we knew what the message was, we just hadn’t connected with it yet, and playing for one another is more powerful than we ever knew.”

The Seahawks eventually came together — and let’s not forget, they also got healthier — which is why they are enjoying a bye this week instead of preparing for a playoff game, or worse, done for the season, which seemed like a real possibility when they were 6-4.

Last season wasn’t perfect either for Seattle, but it featured one fewer loss and quite a bit less drama, which is why Carroll admitted that is some ways this season has been more satisfying than last.

Whether you want to call it a Super Bowl hangover or just the challenges of being on top and trying to stay there, this season has tested the Seahawks in unique ways, but because they were able to come together and rediscover what made them so good a year ago, they have as good a chance as any team to be back in the Super Bowl a month from now.

“We figured it out, it just took us a long time,” Carroll said. “It just took us longer than we would like.”

Herald Columnist John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com