Top 5 stories of NFL Wild Card Weekend

Coaching mayhem

Let’s take a momentary break from playoff action to talk about teams going a bit nuts.

We already saw San Francisco move on from Jim Harbaugh. Sure, it was a mutual decision but we’re all pretty sure things just got ugly between Harbaugh (a decidedly prickly pear) and GM Trent Baalke.

Then we had the odd departure of Doug Marrone from Buffalo, in part because the team wouldn’t give his assistants extensions, though I think we can all agree there is likely more to it. Ultimately reports like that of The Buffalo News’ Vic Carucci, peg Marrone as unhappy with the organizational structure and how the new owners were arranging things.

And we’ve also got the weird Philadelphia Eagles-Chip Kelly fracas, which seems to have cleared up now with Kelly getting control of complete control over personnel according to NJ.com’s Matt Lombardo.

Why are teams upsetting coaches who are winning for them? The Niners were not a good team before Harbaugh despite having plenty of talent. Now that they’ve run him off, who will be able to replicate what he did? And Marrone might not have been a Hall of Fame coach, but he just gave the Bills their first winning season in a very long time.

Why couldn’t these teams find a way to work their issues out like Philadelphia? Why are they risking a return to irrelevance over personality issues – something which should be negotiable?

Good coaches are very hard to find – as the Oakland Raiders and New York Jets – and a winning one is worth a lot.

Will these teams regret their decisions? Will they wish they had been more like Philly?

Next: Will Arizona be able to win with Ryan Lindley?