My position on Joey Harrington

There are two articles that accurately present my position on Joey Harrington - that we jsut don't know what to think about him. Here they are, and the relevant sections of each.
Jeffri Chadiha - SI.com - Pressure's on Harrington

There's too much talent around him. There are too many reasons for him to succeed. In short, there are no more excuses to explain his struggles. I admit to being one of Harrington's defenders, because, like a lot of young quarterbacks, he deserves time to grow up. I've wanted to know what he could do with a supporting cast of playmakers around him. Now, in year four of his tenure with the Lions, we're about to find out. The critics who bash Harrington the most tend to overlook the problems Detroit has had with its passing game since his arrival. He didn't have any receivers as a rookie, unless you want to mistakenly classify Az-Zahir Hakim and Bill Schroeder as reliable targets. Injuries have limited Rogers, the second pick in the '03 draft, to only six games over his first two seasons (which is another reason to have Mike Williams in the fold). And Roy Williams limped through most of his rookie season after exciting fans with his potential. Regardless of Harrington's deficiencies, this isn't the way to find out what kind of quarterback the Lions have.

Jerry Green - Detroit News - Quarterback controversy is nothing new for Lions

But Joey Harrington, in my view, has been a bust mostly because Charles Rogers has been injured early in the past two seasons. Joey has been a bust because the acrobatic Roy Williams dropped an occasional pass in a critical situation. He has been a bust because Az-Zahir Hakim has butterfingers. He has been a bust because he has lacked reliable tight ends.

He has been a bust because after his most stirring moments as a pro -- the 80-yard drive against the clock against Minnesota -- the Lions failed to manage a proper snap on the extra-point attempt.

I think both of those columns sum it all up perfectly.

Joey Harrington's Scientific Evaluation

So there is this ESPN Insider columnist - KC Joyner - that I've never heard of spouting off that he's done this 'scientific analysis' of Joey Harrington and David Carr. He calls himself the Football Scientist even. In his ratings, he rates Carr as nearly god-like and Joey as an NFL bottom feeder. Yet when I read the descriptions, he is incredibly inconsistent in his definitions, and he spouts some numbers that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Being a scientist and engineer myself, I'm a bit mystified by the things this guy has written...

He rates Joey and David's play with some criteria he calls 'bad decisions', which is completely subjective. That's fine, but it's far from scientific. Personally, if I'm going to use statistics to back up a point, I like to make sure they are actually statistics, not something that's as interpretive as your personal review of a QB's decision making. Where I'm really surprised is how he claims that Carr made only 10 bad decisions all of last season. Heck, there were at least 6 plays Carr would like to have had back in the single game against the Lions. He threw 1 int, was sacked 5 times, and missed open receivers at least 4 more times. In my book, most of those count as Bad Decisions. An INT is always a bad decision in my book. Coverage sacks are always bad decisions as well.

Some people have this impression that by having a QB take sacks instead of throwing the ball away or dumping it off is a good thing, because he opens the possibility of hitting a big play. This is probably the dumbest criticism I have ever heard about Joey.

A sack is NEVER better than a dump off or a throw away.

On a sack, you lose yardage, you lose a down, and you exposed your QB to injury. Any one of those things is not good, all three are combined to kill drives and cause teams to lose games. Want proof? Simply look to the first preseason game - Joey is sacked on consecutive plays, we go from 2nd and 15 at the 20 - an easily makable field goal - to 4th and forever from the 36 yard line. Hanson would have had to try a 54 yard field goal from that spot. AND our starting QB got hit twice, risking injury twice. Regardless of your feelings about Joey, you don't want your QB to get hit. You want him to have a clean jersey at the end of the game.

Do you want your QB to stand in the pocket and take as much time as he needs to complete a pass? Absolutely. Do you want him to hold on, waiting for a receiver to come open and get crushed because he can't find anyone open? Not in a million years.

With all of that, I can't buy this guy's premise that Carr made only 10 bad decisions all of last season. Heck, Carr threw 14 INT's...

Next, and I've been preaching this one for a while, it's nearly impossible in any offense to play WR Roulette and expect positive results. When your starting receivers change on a weekly basis, the adjustments a QB has to make are tremendous. The Lions lined up the same top 3 WR's in consecutive weeks only 2 times last year. In every other single week, at least one of the top 3 WR's changed. 5 times, 2 of the 3 starting WR's were different from one week to the next. It's foolish to not take this into account when judging a QB, yet this genius poo-pooh's it as insignificant.

Do Roy Williams, Tai Streets, David Kircus and Reggie Swinton all run routes at the same speed, preciseness and position on the field? Absolutely not - yet that progression of receivers lined up at the Flanker position happened in games 9-12 last season. To think that a QB having to make those kind of adjustments to where he throws the ball on all those timing routes won't be affected by his receivers is foolish.

To look at it from another viewpoint - I saw something last year on ESPN on Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison. Apparently, they have a routine where after ever practice, and in pre-game warmups, they play pitch and catch for all 18 different routes that Harrison will run. This is in addition to their regular practice. They have been doing this ever since Harrison came into the league. Of course Manning and Harrison have the best chemistry of any QB-WR combo in the league - and it's in large part because they continually practice and repeat this little game. Manning doesn't even have to think about where Harrison will be on a route, he instinctively knows. He can concentrate on his other receivers and use Harrison as his 3rd option because he knows exactly where he'll be if the first two options aren't there, and it requires very little time to assess whether Marvin is open. He can throw to Marvin on a double hitch move before he even makes his cut because he knows exactly where Marvin will be.

Now contrast that to Joey lining up with a new flanker every week. The difference is astounding.

Was Joey great last year? Nope. Was he even good? Not really. Can you separate his stats from the players he had to work with? Not a chance.

One final thought - That writer commented that Carr had some below-average WR talent with Jabar Gaffney, Corey Bradford and Derek Armstrong. He failed to mention that Carr did have Andre Johnson all year - his #1 target. Joey had his #1 go down on the 3rd play of the season and his #2 was playing on one ankle after game 4. He only wishes his remaining targets were as talented as Bradford, Gaffney and Anderson...

Hey, I'm learning...

As I play around more and more with this blog, I'm learning how to do more and more stuff. Like adding pictures. And finally getting hyperlinks up and running. Who knows, maybe I'll even figure out how to get my posts published sooner...

9-9-100

One preseason game down, 3 to go. We may have learned a bit about the Lions Friday, but it's still early and based on one preseason game, it's hard to say what we saw will be what we see the entire season. But we did see some things that looked improved from last year, and some things that looked very similar. Here is my impression of what I saw Friday.


QB - Joey looked good. Not great, but good. The 9 for 9 passing was great to see. There was once or twice I thought he left his first read a bit early, but it's hard to argue with the numbers. I'll take that kind of production any day of the week.
Garcia - well I hope that he just has to work some bugs out. He looked like a panicked rookie out there with happy feet. He threw off his back foot several times, he hurried a few throws, and he left the pocket very quickly - too quickly for my taste. I'm going to sound like a broken record by the time I'm done writing this, but it was only the first preseason game - let's see some more before we make a final judgement.
Orlovsky looked like... well, the rookie that he is. He's big, pretty mobile, has a strong arm, and his head was definitely swimming. He's a rook in his first preseason game so what did we expect?

From this point forward, I'll simply abbreviate It's The First PreSeason Game as ITFPSG. Saves a lot of typing the same thing over and over...

RB - KJ looked good. Maybe not quite last 8 games of last season good, but hey, ITFPSG. And 3 carries is never enough to really judge a back on anyway.
The Toose looked OK to me. He does some good things, but you can easily see why the Lions took KJ instead of leaving their ground attack to him. He'll be an OK backup. I don't think he's starter quality no matter how good he thinks he is.
I don't know if Bryson had more than 4 snaps in the game. I only remember one carry.
Howard Jackson is small. Maybe he can return kicks, if not, it's time for him to say "Hello, Arena League".
Sledge broke his leg and will be out 6-8 weeks. Plan on 8. Not good, but maybe it opens up the 3 WR sets. We'll have to see...

WR - Roy was in mid-season form. Great tip-toe sideline catch. 'nuff said.
Chuck looked good. He took a good hit with no effect. Caught a nice sideline grab. We'll be solid with him and Roy.
KJ2 caught everything near him.
BMW looked like a rookie - a few great plays, a few rookie mistakes. Give him some time, he'll be fine. He definitely looks like a TE after he catches the ball though - great strength.
Vines had the dropsies yesterday. With the way everyone else was catching the ball, that made it stand out even more. But again, ITFPSG, so give him another chance.
Kircus may have had 2 balls thrown in his vicinity, but neither was well thrown.
Hamilton looked OK, but he dropped one as well.
Savoy looked pretty good. The competition between those 4 for the final roster spot will be very interesting, and will almost surely come down to the final preseason game.

TE - Pollard caught 1 pass that I can recall. Didn't see too much of him out there.
Fitzsimmons looked good - just like every other time we've seen him. A few good catches.
Randall should make the squad. He looked good

OL - Here is where the disappointments start coming in.
Backus and DeMulling should take 100% of the blame for our first drive stalling. 1st and 10 - DeMulling whiffed and KJ gets dropped for -5. 2nd and 15, Backus does his best 'ole!' move and Harrington get sacked quickly. 3rd and 26, Backus does another 'ole!', his guy pulls Joey's shoulder around, then DeMulling's guy finishes Joey off. BAD job by those two.
Butler - looked decent playing against tough competition. I think the Kid may just work, but ITFPSG.
Raiola and Woody - Nothing wrong there. Plus we didn't see Woody's butt crack at all which makes this a very good game.

Sorry, but I'm getting bored with the detailed descriptions. Here is the quick version for the D - It stunk on one drive - the 98 yard drive by the Jets 1st team O - but did OK the rest of the game. That one drive though is enough to make anyone nervous as the D looked very similar to last year where they just couldn't get off the field on 3rd down. I hope for a much better performance in the next game. Of course the next game is against Cleveland, so that may not be saying much. As for the positionsl breakdowns...

DL - Did those guys play? I didn't see anyone on the DLine make any type of play the entire game. Very unimpressed. Even Baby didn't show up for this one. The two Rooks - Cody and Swancutt - looked like they had some effort, but neither got to the QB.

LB - Wow, these guys looked rusty. Boss was fast, but too fast for his own good. Shake off that rust Boss and don't overrun plays. Teddy looked OK, but mostly because he was flying around, not necessarily at anyone in particular. No one else stood out.

DB - Well... Bryant didn't impress me. McQ did. Wilson looked a lot better than I thought he would. That undrafted free arent kid from Penn State whose dad was Millen's roomie (the fact that I remember that story from the broadcast is really frightening) looked good. T Holt led the team in tackles. I don't think the Jets even tried to throw at Dre.

In general, this was a boring game after the first two series. We didn't stop the Jets on a 98 yard drive, and two of our drives stalled inside the 20. Now it's wait til the next game...

Rating the Offseason

For me to grade an offseason, I try to look at what the team needed, and what is realisitc for a team to acomplish. Going into this offseason, I thought we needed to bring in starters at these positions:
SS - Walker had to go
OG - Loverne should be a backup
TE - One who could catch
DE - Redding should be a backup
I wanted to add depth at a few other positions:
FS - In case Holt doesn't suceed
WR - In case the injury bug hit again
QB - In case Joey doesn't work out

Filling all of those positions would be a tall order for any GM, but it is necessary to get this team to the next level. So how did we do?

SS - Kennedy - I'm OK with this signing as I was kinda hoping that we would wrangle Donovin Darius from Jacksonville. Their asking price was too high, so this was the next best option.

OG - DeMulling - Nice pickup at the right price.

TE - Pollard - IF he still has a good year or two left, this was a great pickup. If not, we're still looking at one of two undrafted FA's to be our starting TE. I tend to think Pollard has 2 more good seasons left.

DE - Cody - Hmmmm... The kid was great in college, and probably is a bit of a tweener DT / DE. I haven't seen him line up against the big boys yet. I'm actually more excited about Swancutt as I'm impressed with his drive. Throw these guys in with Redding, and they may suffice. Something tells me our #1 need next year will be DE though.

FS - McQuarters - Hmmmm... This guy has never impressed me much, but as a backup CB, FS and KR, he's about as versatile as you can get. Problem is we really needed a better backup FS as we really didn't need a backup CB - his natural position. I'm not overly excited here, but I think Holt will be fine, so I'm hoping that McQ never sees the field at FS.

WR - Johnson and Williams - wow. I mean WOW!!!! I guess Millen doesn't want to see Joey throwing to NFL-E type players for half the season ever again. I wanted KJ2 from the opening bell of free agency as I thought he was the perfect possession receiver for this team. He's kinda the anti-Az, as he runs great routes, has flypaper for hands, but he's not the quickest or fastest guy. I woulda been completely happy with just him, but then we pulled the coup of the draft and got BMW. I woulda taken BMW as the top pick in the draft last year - that's how much I like him. I don't want to get into too much hyperbole here, but his pick may have vaulted our O to near the top of the league. Teams just can't match up against all of our receivers. I'm still amazed that we got BMW...

QB - Garcia - Going into free agency, I think everyone in the football world knew that this was a no-brainer. What suprised me more was how we took serious looks at Brad Johnson and Kurt Warner, then how Garcia got serious talking to Denver and Seattle. This was the perfect fit for both Jeff and the Lions as he knows the system, he's been to 3 probowls running it, he's a perfect safety blanket should Joey falter, and he should push Joey hard for the starting spot in camp, likely making both players better.

So, when I add it all up, I'd give Millen a B+ for filling every spot I thought we needed to fill, a B for the actual players he brought in to fill them, and an A+ for his drafting of a true difference maker. That puts him in with an A- in my book. Damn good offseason. Honestly, I wouldn't rate any other teams off-season better than this one. Now it's up to Mooch to translate this treasure-trove of personnel upgrades into victories. My gut is telling me we're going to see success similar to his 2001 SF team (Of course SF went 4-12, 6-10 in the two preceeding years, then went 12-4 in 2001)... I just have a feeling about this...