Five Years Later, Pal Joey An Unhired Gun

They were One and Two, back in the day. The top two quarterbacks snapped off the board in the NFL Draft. Each was going to ragtag teams, which is why they were drafted so high to begin with. And each was going to be saviors to their respective franchises.

Today, one of them has been squeezed out of town by a recent acquisition, and is with a new team now; and the other totes football gear and a resume with him, trying to sell his wares to someone – anyone – who’ll be intrigued by a spotty career (so far) enough to offer him a job

Number One is David Carr, drafted by the expansion Houston Texans in that 2002 draft. Five seasons of picking himself off the turf ad nauseum later, Carr watched his starting job claimed by the newly-acquired Matt Schaub, whose biggest asset, it would appear, is that he’s not … David Carr.

Number Two is our old Pal Joey, the Harrington kid from Oregon.

Five years ago, Harrington posed the usual pose after Draft Day, smiling from ear-to-ear and holding up his new Detroit Lions jersey, with team president Matt Millen and then-coach Marty Mornhinweg. He was the handsome kid who played piano and who was finally – FINALLY – the quarterback of our dreams.

Yet today Harrington is the traveling salesman quarterback – the gun for hire who now has the daunting task of going door-to-door in the NFL and being his own marketing and sales departments.

It didn’t work out in Detroit – not surprising, really, in retrospect considering who coached him here – and it didn’t work out in Miami, his preferred point of destination after telling the Lions last spring that he’d had enough of their shenanigans.

So here he is – unemployed and with only a few months until training camps launch.

The fact was spouted off liberally almost as soon as Harrington’s name was read by Commissioner Paul Tagliabue: no Lions quarterback has been named to the Pro Bowl team since Greg Landry, in 1972. Thirty years ago, we all said.

And still counting.



The fact remains now, and all it is, is five years older.

Harrington didn’t change that fact. Didn’t come close, really. After his first game as a Lion, against the Green Bay Packers at Ford Field, Harrington showed brilliance enough that everyone in the joint, and those watching from their sofas, would have called a man crazy who’d have said that Landry would remain the last Lions Pro Bowl QB by the time Harrington left Detroit. Some were even imagining Joey’s mug on a bronze bust in a hall in Canton, Ohio. After one game – and a losing effort, at that.

So thirsty were Lions fans for a competent signal caller that Harrington’s flashes were enough moisture from which the faithful denizens slurped heartily, and with anticipation of more.

But then Mornhinweg was put out of everyone’s misery after Joey’s rookie year, and Steve Mariucci breezed into town. Mariucci and his popgun West Coast Offense didn’t jibe with Harrington’s strengths, but it didn’t seem to matter to the coach, or to the man who hired him, Millen. After two-plus seasons of lukewarm endorsement, Harrington watched another coach get the ziggy. An interim coach, Dick Jauron, remained interim after the 2005 season, and Rod Marinelli was brought in. And the genius offensive coordinator Mike Martz, who held a quarterback school from which Harrington dropped out. That’s when Joey said he’d sure like to play in Miami.

Mission accomplished, eventually. The Dolphins had only gimpy Daunte Culpepper in front of him. Predictably, Culpepper went down with an injury, right on schedule. And Harrington stepped in and did his usual thing: competent yet not spectacular quarterbacking. On Thanksgiving Day in Detroit, Harrington led his Dolphins to a trouncing over the Lions and could barely mask his grin afterward.

All this, and he still got broomed out of Miami for his trouble.

He knocked on the door of the Carolina Panthers this week, worked out for the coaches, toured the facilities. The usual routine for the unemployed football player. Perhaps he got his hopes up in the process.

Then the Panthers went out and signed (drumroll please) … David Carr, the erstwhile Houston QB.

No joke.


Carolina picked Carr over Harrington, just as the Texans did in the 2002 draft

I have written that Harrington would look good in the silver and black of the Oakland Raiders. The Raiders have for years been a football team who’ve embraced the unembraceable – the NFL misfit or aging veteran who needed to revive his career. It’s a tactic that they’ve been able to ride to the tune of a winning percentage near .700, until recent hard times.

Harrington, I spouted, should put the Raiders on his list of cold calls and doors to knock on.

He hasn’t, as far as I know, taken my advice yet.

Carolina is scratched off the list. Other teams who would potentially need a quarterback have either someone else in mind, or will take their chances in the draft.

And five years after being one of the darlings of said draft, Joey Harrington now will watch it with interest, for the wrong combination of teams and college QBs could put his future in serious jeopardy.

Well, he still has the good looks. TV could be a possibility, not that being pleasant to look at has been a major prerequisite, if you look at some of the mugs they’re putting on the tube lately.

Then there’s always the piano.

This gun for hire!