When the Detroit Lions drafted Oregon quarterback Joey Harrington with the No. 3 overall selection in the 2002 NFL Draft, they thought they were getting the face of the franchise and a leader who’d eventually take them to the promised land.
Unfortunately, what followed was anything but.
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“I wasn’t really surprised because I knew I was going somewhere between the third and 15th pick, so I was absolutely thrilled even though it was a team that had finished 2-14 in 2001,” he said about coming to the Motor City. “I saw it as an opportunity to make a mark on an organization that had some potential even though they hadn’t won a championship in a long time. I was a young, naïve, optimistic and confident player when I came to the Lions and thought, ‘why the hell can’t I help do this in Detroit?’
In 55 career games with the Lions, Harrington managed only 18 wins. He was then jettisoned to the Miami Dolphins following the 2005 season in exchange for a 2007 fifth-round draft pick.
He immediately recognized the expectations of his position shortly after arriving in Detroit:
“Literally when I walked off the jetway in Detroit the day after the draft, this stranger welcomed me and then said: ;The two toughest jobs in Detroit are playing quarterback for the Lions and goalie for the Red Wings.; He then slapped me on the back as he was walking away and said, ‘we haven’t had a quarterback since Bobby Layne, good luck!’ I did not feel pressure but I recognized it. Did it ultimately result in a mindset that was counterproductive? Yes.”
As Harrington reflects on his tenure in Detroit, he knows things didn’t go according to plan.
“Having been removed from it for 15 years, I can acknowledge that there were times I was really terrible and other times when I played really well,” he said. “But in the end, things didn’t go well and I know the fans were frustrated.”
When asked what the most difficult part of his time with Detroit was, Harrington acknowledged that he wassn’t necessarily the right fit for the team’s coaching staff at the time.
“I knew Steve Mariucci (second head coach) wasn’t necessarily thrilled with having me, and I don’t think (Marty) Mornhinweg was either,” he said. “I wasn’t their style of quarterback. Mike McMahon was more mobile and athletic than me and fit better in their Bill Walsh-style West Coast offense. There was a lot of trying to put a square in a round hole and they weren’t willing to adjust to my strengths. When I wasn’t playing well, two to three years into my career, I think teammates started getting pissed. It was like ‘they’re paying you a heckuva a lot of money to be playing better than you are,’ and that was the truth. There was also this culture of losing that I did not want to subscribe to and it created a bit of a rift. Looking back, I could have handled it in a different way. My continued insistence that we can get better if we keep working didn’t sit well with people.
At a certain point, I learned that people want you to acknowledge that things are not going well. I never felt in Detroit that I got to the point where I felt I had command of the offense, my own game and the locker room.”
Mariucci was shown the door after the Thanksgiving game during the 2005 season. It didn’t take long for the blame to start coming Harrington’s way – particularly from that of a teammate.
“If we’d had production on offense, in particular the quarterback position, Mooch wouldn’t have been fired,” cornerback Dre’ Bly said afterwards. “If Jeff Garcia hadn’t gotten hurt, we wouldn’t be in this position today. Mooch wouldn’t have gotten fired.”
“That was the end of it for me,” Harrington said. “At a certain level, I understood where he was coming from since they were paying me millions for a job that I wasn’t doing, for a whole host of reasons. But I was very upset that he didn’t come to talk with me. The only ones to back me up in the building were one player and the cafeteria chef. When Rod Marinelli was named head coach, he told me that he and Mike Martz liked me and thought they could help turn things around.
Rod was the first coach to sit down and have an honest conversation with me. I said ‘that’s great, but you to need to know that I will play for you and Matt Millen because I respect both of you, but except for a couple of teammates, the rest of them can all go to hell.’ I was then traded to Miami. The confidence I had that was brimming when I left Oregon was completely gone when I left Detroit. It created a whole lot issues for me that went beyond performance because I was dealing with depression and anxiety.”
Of course, Harrington was able to exact a bit of revenge against the Lions when he returned with Miami for the annual Thanksgiving game at Ford Field in 2006. He threw three TD passes along with 213 yards in the Dolphins’ 27-10 victory.
“Before the game, the Lions showed this video montage on the scoreboard showing me getting sacked and throwing interceptions while Billy Joel’s ‘Piano Man’ played in the background. I was standing next to my teammate, Justin Peelle, who had played with me at Oregon and we just started laughing. Justin said, ‘well, you really made an impression at this place.” When I got back to Miami, Billy Joel sent me a note suggesting that maybe the Dolphins would want to play ‘Piano Man’ when I was introduced. He also wrote, “P.S. Maybe the Lions should play my song, ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire.'”
I am grateful that Detroit gave me the opportunity to be a starting quarterback in the league and they paid me well, but beating the Lions on Thanksgiving Day proved to me that I could dig myself out of a hole and play well as an NFL quarterback.”
– – Quotes via Bill Dow of The Detroit Free Press Link – –
