Allen Park
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Oh, to be a fly on the wall at
Allen Park these days and know just what led to Joey’s appointment as next
Sunday’s starter for the Detroit Lions. Although entrenched as the starting
quarterback virtually since the day he was drafted third over all, for the first
time rumors were running rampant. They spoke of a divide between the coaching
staff and the front office, not to mention whispers of a mutiny in the locker
room. Is Mooch disenchanted with Harrington? Was it Millen who earmarked
Harrington as the franchise’s savior against all conventional wisdom? Does
Mooch blame Harrington for the team’s failed season? Does Millen attribute the
Lions’ offensive failings to Mooch’s play calling? Isn’t this just a juicy
finale to the soap opera we like to call Detroit Lions football?
It is hard to say what is
going on behind the tinted windows and locked doors at Allen Park. Maybe one
should not ask what is going on in a nuthouse. After all, what could be going on
except people going nuts? Are Lions’ fans are a sadistic bunch, or has losing
just made us cynical? Maybe rumors are just our way of coping with losses while
extracting some entertainment from our listless franchise? So we psychoanalyze
Roy Williams “bristle” as he denies trying to undercut his current quarterback.
We closely watch McMahon “scoff” as he rejects the idea that he might be given a
chance to start. Did Mooch’s eyes reveal that he was drawing at the bottom of
his well despite muted words of optimism? Virgil knew that gossip flies fastest
when the lid is sealed tight, but the undercurrent of noise is palpable. Things
are afoot. Blood is in the water. The lack of anything concrete just feeds the
frenzy spilling out onto bulletin boards, newspaper columns, and radio talk
shows. McMahon-Harrington re-deaux, why not indulge? After all, even a blind
man can recognize the cleavers of the meat grinder applying the finishing
touches to a promising season. It doesn’t take much of a sense of history to
know that now is the time for the big egos to tap dance towards the exits with
their fingers of blame all the while parrying the inevitable fall of the
executioner’s axe.
These are high times at Allen
Park. Ah, to be a Lions’ fan, where the enjoyment of winning football can be
replaced by innuendo of palace intrigue and rampant betting on who will next
face the guillotine. The feeding frenzy is just beginning, but in the mean time
Joey Harrington is starting again. This raises the necessary question: why?
Contrary to the herd mentality
Joey Harrington was not the reason that we lost the Green Bay game. Sure his
stat line was pitiful even given the conditions at Lambeau Field, and the Lions
let a commanding lead slip away. So what else is new? If you are looking for
a scapegoat Harrington is ready if unwilling. Seeing his dejection as the field
kept shrinking on the Lions in that dismal fourth quarter, I could not help but
feel sorry for him. You knew what the following week would bring. The post
game interview would commence his weekly march to Calvary, as his teammates
would scuttle him up that cross to bear penance for their collective sins. The
reprieve would come only at one PM on Sunday in the form of a chorus of boos
that would decisively shift to chants for McMahon by his first interception.
But I have been a fan of this miserable franchise for far too long to let pity
trump reason. We need to start the quarterback that is in the best interest of
this franchise. That is where it gets interesting and philosophical.
There are many theories about
quarterbacks. One is the stud theory. According to this theory the franchise
quarterbacks are so rare and their impact on the team is so significant that you
need to take them when you have that opportunity early in the draft. This was
the reasoning behind Joey’s selection, Peyton Manning’s selection, and Ryan
Leaf’s selection. As Lions’ fans who have suffered through Long, Ware, and
Batch know, however, there is an equally valid bust postulate that maintains
nearly the converse: He who drafts a quarterback early beware, for the majority
are doomed to failure and you can never tell who will succeed. Relative to
Harrington this appears a complete wash. All we can say to this point is that
he is not Marino nor is he Ryan Leaf. This brings us to our second set of
theories regarding quarterback development. According to the grooming theory,
signal callers require experience to be effective. It can take up to three year
to feel even comfortable in the West Coast Offense! History both proves and
disproves the grooming theory to something resembling a statistical tie, which
leads some to the postulate of utter chance: quarterbacks are such strange
animals that you should not even bother to figure them out. Coach as you might,
scout as best as you can, you will never know if they are turning the corner.
You are partaking in one of God’s ultimate mysteries and there is no telling
when or if something deep inside their head clicks and suddenly you have a Kurt
Warner, Rich Gannon, or Tommy Maddox who suddenly takes a quantum leap forward.
That being the case you just keep trying your luck and put money on all the
numbers you can muster until the wheel plays itself out.
How can one make a sound
decision in the face of such contradiction and uncertainty? Let’s turn to the
facts. Harrington has improved this year. Look at some of the little things.
For the first time he can scramble, at least a little but it has generated some
first downs which keeps drives alive and gives defenses at least something to
think about. Harrington looks a little faster and stronger. Against the Green
Bay Packer his changing of the count had them off balance. That is good
management. He is making way less mistakes which has made a monumental
difference in the interception column. Harrington is taking sacks and he is
giving plays more of a chance than last year. His completion percentage is up.
This is real improvement. The problem is that it has not shown up in the win
column. Fans feel betrayed. After all they had mailed in their coupons for the
third year improvement bonus only to find it a cruel hoax. If Harrington has
improved a little, it was not near what was promised and not near enough to stay
the Lions’ dreadful slide.
What ails Harrington? Who
amongst us fans not privy to the closed door meetings and film break down is
able to say? My guess would be confidence. He looks beat. He reportedly is
accurate in practice, but hardly ever makes a play when under pressure. When he
takes the field towards the end of the game do you not feel the dread seeping
into your bones knowing that the drive will fail? Is it true what they say that
losing is contagious? Excellence in sports requires mental acuity as a
precondition for success and in no position is this more relevant playing
quarterback in the NFL. Harrington is on a heroic quest. He has to pass
through the valley of shadow and beat his demons. No one knows, even him, how
or if he will come out of it. Benching him might shatter his confidence.
Benching him might also be just what he needs to gain some perspective. It is
impossible to know.
To start or not to start
Harrington, that is the question. Whether it be better for his confidence to
sit him or start him, or should Mooch take his chances with outrageous fortune
and call McMahon number? Shouldn’t that be the real question, whether the Lions
might benefit by playing McMahon? The question has not been phrased that way
for one compelling reason: to advocate that McMahon gets a shot would be raising
your arms to a sea of troubles. After all if you start McMahon, you are doing
more than making a switch, you are starting to tear at the whole facade of an
idea that the Lions have desperately erected: they are building themselves into
a contender. From that angle, the guy taking snaps from center at Ford Field on
Sunday is a much larger issue than the quarterback position. When you raise the
question of McMahon and contemplate inserting him and his dour career completion
percentage what you are really talking about is whether we have any
organizational plan at all, admitting not only that this season is lost, but
also suggesting that no turn around is in sight.
With Harrington starting the
dream of a turn around remains alive. Well next year with a “healthy” Charles
Rogers and Boss Bailey. But you have to wonder, is this positive thinking or
simply denial, or worse stupidity? If Harrington is Millen’s guy as I suspect
he is, than tossing him to the curb is a de facto admission of failure.
He not only misjudged Harrington, and misjudged him badly, but he also bungled
the larger project of building a team around him. Let’s be brutally honest
here. Don’t you think that Harrington just might look a smidgen more
respectable on the stat sheet if say Backus, Loverne, and Raiola were not
playing rock, paper, scissors, when it came to playing turn style on any given
snap? Harrington’s failures raise the uncomfortable specter that he was not
given enough surrounding talent to succeed.
You can see this is a frontier Millen has little stomach for
crossing. Recently, in an interview with Steve Pate of the Oakland News the
Lions’ de facto GM and undisputed architect of this team revealingly
summed up the Lions’ Jekyll and Hyde performance.
"This group, talent wise, it's pretty good," Millen said. "I
think everybody can see that. I think the fans have been able to see it. I think
the league has been able to see it. The only thing I believe that holds us back
right now is...”
"You know Steve has that 'NOW' clock in his office? If they (the
players) believe that, we'll be that much better. We may not be a Super
Bowl-caliber team, but there's enough talent here that confidence and belief
change a bunch of things. We're not that far."
"Sometimes you watch the way we've played and think, 'Well, we're
not quite ready yet,' " Millen said. "But we're just as ready as the other
teams."
"The way we played against the Giants?" Millen said. "Our players
can play against anybody. That's probably as good as they've played in my time
here. And they can do it every week."
"Oh, there's some things we need, but the talent is there. They
just have to really believe it. You're back to Tug McGraw – you’ve got to
believe. And they can't talk themselves into it. They have to really understand
where they're at as a group because there's enough stuff here. They need to use
it, and we need to use it."
So according to their GM the Lions have a good talent level, they
are just not tough enough, presumably not cut in the Millen mold? Millen sounds
a lot like our current commander and chief and very little like Harry “The Buck
Stops Here” Truman. I understand Millen’s frustration. He cannot take the
field. He can only sit back helplessly and watch. But wait a minute. Millen
did put this team together. Are the Lions really more talented than the
Washington, Jacksonville, and Dallas teams they lost to among others?
Mooch demurs. These plays I
call have options he insists. There is nothing preventing Harrington from
throwing deep. The insinuation is clear. The signal caller is the real
problem. And this brings us to a one-way bridge. No one wants to cross this
bridge for fear of admitting that three miserable seasons that numbered only 10
wins, were little more than a waste. On the other hand, to get to the Promised
Land you have to cross the golden river before the burning bridge crashes down.
It seems that for now Mooch and Millen are still holding hands and moving
forward, but they are looking to opposite banks, all the while playing a
monolithic game of chicken that has the entire state of Michigan in thrall. The
popular wisdom right now is that the votes for McMahon are just not there yet,
but that he is drawing closer. Rumors persist about locker room grumbling.
Could Mooch be any less unenthusiastic or evasive in his “endorsement” of
Harrington? What all this politics obscures, however, is flawed reasoning. The
choice for who should start next Sunday is easily made following overwhelming
and impeachable logic.
I have never been big on
McMahon. Perhaps that was just my personal belief that what defines great NFL
quarterbacks such as Montana is that they are crafty and only rarely the team’s
best athletes. Maybe I was swayed by the fact that so many running quarterbacks
tend to excel just as long as their foot speed remains top shelf and that does
not tend to last. Maybe it was McMahon’s dismal college completion percentage
that so perfectly mirrored his spotty NFL performance. These were all valid
reasons for drafting a franchise quarterback and playing him for two plus
seasons. It is not a valid reason for keeping McMahon on the bench right now.
One could make a good case for
starting McMahon purely on the basis of Harrington’s poor play, but the logic
goes far deeper. McMahon looked uncannily accurate in mop up duty against
Indianapolis. Forget the fact that the offense fared no better. With
the run threat abandoned he faced an all out blitz pretty much all the time.
Also throw out McMahon’s lofty completion percentage for that game, since it was
only a short stretch and he has teased us before. What I refuse to throw
out, however, was two startling observations. First, there was McMahon’s
body language. He stood in there and he did not relent. Call it an
impression, but I felt like we had a chance to move the ball. The swagger
seemed to carry over to his teammates. Isn’t this a team in desperate need
of leadership? Isn’t quarterback normally that position by right and
reason? Second, and more importantly, I saw the offense flowing.
Flowing? I might be waxing poetic here, but did it not seem that all of
the sudden receivers were getting the ball at just the right moment? For a
while it seemed that I saw what we have long talked about: the West Coast
Offense.
Although rumor has it that we
have been running it for four years, I have yet to see a glimpse of anything
resembling the 1980s 49ers. For a brief period there, I thought I saw it.
Here is what I think the difference is. For as much as he is criticized
for his athleticism, Harrington’s real problem is mental. How else can you
explain the Jekyll and Hyde performances or the reputed gap between practice and
games? Neither is Harrington afraid of getting hit as many maintain.
If I am right, what Harrington is paranoid about is making a mistake on any
given play, or moved to a larger scale about failing and being run out of town.
This is not a fear of losing, however, so much as an obsession with being too
perfect. The result is a type of inner paralysis that one often sees on JV
tennis courts. Harrington transfers his anxiety to the playing field.
The offense does not flow because Harrington’s mind does not, and as his
mechanics swoon towards erratic the orchestra falls into staccato. If this
theory is true we need to start McMahon. If it is not true there is only
one way to disprove it and find out the answer to this team’s most important
question: start McMahon. If McMahon falters just as much as Harrington we
can probably assume that the problems are larger than one single player.
If McMahon shines we have struck gold. Surely, you can resign him at a
price equal to jettisoning Harrington now. No question is of greater
significance to this franchise, and the only way to test it scientifically is
the double blind. Isn't Joey on the third year of a five year contract?
McMahon's is running out so on the basis of "his contract" it is imperative he
should start so that we can test our investments right?
There is another far more
compelling reason for starting McMahon, however. The Lions have far more
offensive talent than they did in McMahon's other spot starts. Remember
Schroeder and Ron Rivers his stalwarts in the starting line up three years ago?
We have seen Harrington remain eerily consistent after improving his cast
significantly. We upgraded the offensive line slightly and added two premier
players in Kevin Jones and Roy Williams. Sure, they are rookies, but they are
also talents who have put up player of the week totals. Haven’t you wondered
how McMahon would look with this cast?
One school of thought is that
a more physically talented quarterback may be better positioned to take
advantage of his cast. Roy Williams is often likened to Terrell Owens. Did you
know that TO got an estimated 60% of his yards and 75% of his touchdowns on
broken plays? When is the last time that you saw Harrington make something of a
broken play? Isn’t it important to see if a scrambling McMahon could hit
Roy Williams for
a seventy-yard touchdown on a broken play? Would that not change the whole
calculus of the offense, placing fear in the defense's heart, making us less
predictable, and stretching the field? Do you not wonder if suddenly receivers
would be catching balls and breaking tackles like they seemed to be doing late
during the Indianapolis game?
The Lions owe Joey the money
on his contract and nothing else. Will benching Harrington make him angry?
Yes, and maybe that is a good thing. Will benching Harrington hurt his
confidence? If you worry about that question then you have already found your
answer. Will benching Harrington impede the development of this team? There
are only two guys we are actually developing on offense and last I saw Kevin
Jones has been smashing through nine man fronts and Roy Williams has been
rendered invisible-next question! Will benching Harrington bruise some egos in
the front office? Ah, I think we may have stumbled on the answer to our
question. No wonder Joey Harrington is starting again. Let’s hope that he
earns his keep or failing that the head honcho has the balls to look into that
darkened mirror and see himself.
