NFL Notebook, Week 17: Playoff predictions, coaching carousel and more

Predictions for the Wild Card playoff games, diving into the coaching carousel, exploring the NFL Draft and more coming in the NFL Notebook for Week 17.

Patience is a virtue. Few things are granted instantly. Unfortunately, I was prepared to support that claim when I came to an interesting realization: Out of the six coaches to have been hired in 2010 or earlier, only two did not have a winning record in either of their first two seasons as head coach: Jason Garrett and Pete Carroll.

Garrett is as good as gone, so we can forget about him. As for Carroll, he went 7-9 in his first two seasons and hasn’t had a losing record since. I expanded the search to coaches hired since 2015, and I still found that each coach relished in at least one winning season in his first two years.

I used to be all about patience, and how teams should give a little more leeway to underperforming coaches in their first two seasons. Obviously, there’s a boatload of outside factors that can influence it. For example, I was dubious about firing Pat Shurmur (as I explain later), but a combined 9-23 in his two seasons as the Giants’ coach is not very promising.

Is there a point to this spew about patience and the complexities of holding values? Yes, there is. Sometimes, there isn’t one true answer. It’s possible for patience to be important and for it to not be important. It is okay to hold a little perspective. The worst thing you can do is refuse to take a glance at the other side of the coin.

So when your team makes a move that doesn’t sit well with you, it might be in your best interest to sit back and realize, “I can choose to be mad about this, or I can wait to see how it plays out before making any snap judgements.”

Today, on a bittersweet NFL Notebook that caps off the seasons for 20 football teams:

• Who’s winning this weekend?
• How successful are first overall picks?
• What’s next for teams that are making coaching changes?
• Which future head coach deserves the most recognition?
• Should three quarterbacks go in the top ten of the NFL Draft?
• When do the Rams finally listen to my uniform advice?

Let’s start with some playoff predictions that are sure to go awry.