Never before (at least, never during the seven seasons we’ve been covering the sport on a daily basis) has a coach entered a season with the public aware that it’s his final year.

In 2008, one coach already has declared that the next season will be his farewell tour; another one is believed to be doing a victory lap, even though his team is trying to dispel the notion that 2008 is his last year.

In Seattle, Mike Holmgren has announced that he’ll spend one more year with the team.  In Indy, Tony Dungy declared on the meaningless, self-imposed deadline of January 21 that he’ll return in 2008.  Though the Colts are now trying to create the impression that Dungy might stay beyond next season, they’ve already lined up his successor, and we suspect that the franchise is merely trying at this point to avoid the appearance that Dungy will be engaged in a farewell tour.

It’ll be interesting to see how the status of these two coaches affect the performance of their teams.  In free agency, some players might be leery about coming, or about staying.  They might want more money up front to go to Seattle or Indy, in order to protect against the possibility that they’ll eventually be displaced or dismayed by a new regime.

It’ll also be interesting to see whether more coaches follow this trend in the future. 

Frankly, we don’t like it.

In Holmgren’s case, however, announcing that he’s done after 2008 will avoid the distraction that would have arisen if he had entered the final year of his deal without an extension.  In Dungy’s case, he’s now the coaching equivalent of Brett Favre, and we’ll all now be subjected to an annual game of will-he-or-won’t-he? until Dungy finally walks away.

Though how each man handles his business is his own business, we respect the guys (players and coaches) who avoid engaging in public speculation or debate regarding their status, and who work until they’re done and then walk away.  Though we’ll always be trying to find out when a guy like, for example, Pats coach Bill Belichick might be calling it quits, Belichick apparently realizes that he should never let his own status become a distraction for the organization.  Indeed, the Pats won’t even disclose the specific duration of his deal, likely to avoid a situation in which everyone knows that the current season could be his final one.

We’ve criticized this approach in the past, because folks in each NFL city have a right to know how long the local head coach is under contract.  But if not knowing means that we won’t have to be pawns in a coach’s effort (intentional or not) to grab headlines as he deliberates on his future and then announces to the world that nothing has changed, maybe we prefer ignorance.