ON DECK: Don't count schedule chickens before they hatch

NFL fans love to play the schedule game.
It seems like a great idea, I mean we all think we can look down the schedule and predict wins and losses with at least 50 percent success rate.
But as know-it-all fans, we’re hardly ever right. And when you’re looking down the schedule at your own team trying to convince yourself of a playoff spot, things get dangerous.
As a Seahawks fan, a lot of my predictions were wrong this year. They’ve lost to Arizona, St. Louis and Miami but have beaten the Cowboys, Packers* and Patriots. If you would have told me they’d be 7-5 with a wild card spot all but locked up, I’d take it every day and twice on Sunday. But the futile exercise of playing the schedule game is pretty much just that: futile.
Every year in the NFL sees teams come out of nowhere and perennial powerhouses fall to the wayside. It’s why we love the game and why they play the games.