The Harrington Family Foundation

It is a crazy Monday morning, and what is crazy is this: The Miami Dolphins have just beaten the previously unbeaten Chicago Bears, and the Dolphins still wake up 2-6. So excuse Joey Harrington if his smile is a little lopsided.

Yes, the Detroit Lions would win now and then in Joey's time there, which was the past four seasons. When they did win, it was blind hogs finding acorns. What the Dolphins did to the Bears was, oppositely, what people had been expecting the Dolphins to do to a bunch of teams. The Dolphins were supposed to be good, and then it all turned into mostly disaster till they got the Bears, of all teams.

''I'm sore,'' Harrington says. "It's not just the Bears. I'm always sore after I play a game. But this makes it worth it.''

''This'' being Miami 31, Chicago 13. And that's as far as the numbers go, except for the Bears' six turnovers. It certainly isn't about numbers for Harrington, who throws for only 137 yards in Chicago after running up 414 yards in a 34-24 loss to Green Bay the game before.

Crazy, yes, but this is the lesson we learn over and over. Pretty much stop the other team from running, and run the ball yourself, and you win. And hang on to the ball. The new phrase for that is ''ball security.'' High-falutin', and meaning the same thing. Just hang on to the ball.

The whole thing is so basic -- Harrington hands off 29 times to Ronnie Brown, and Miami's defense keeps charging behind Jason Taylor having a Hall of Fame day -- it's almost embarrassing to ask Harrington anything.

Just nutty. Nice-nutty. Sweet-nutty. Still nutty.

STRANGE DAYS

Right in the foyer of the Dolphins' Nova Southeastern University headquarters, a few yards from where Harrington is sitting, there's that showcase of Duante Culpepper's jersey, and Culpepper's playing shoes. Yes, the Culpepper who played four awkward games before he went back into rehab for the knee stiff from surgery a year ago.

Is this a strange place for Harrington to call home, or what?

''Well, everybody knows why I came in here, which was as an insurance plan for Culpepper,'' he says. If he now sees that as having changed, he is not about to proclaim it.

"Do I love it? I sure do. Do I like these guys I'm playing with? I love 'em.''

He takes a second before going on. "For one thing, I was impressed by the way they handled losing. I don't mean they liked it. It's just. . . well, it tells you something about what kind of people are here.''

He wants it clear he isn't knocking his old teammates for those four bottomless seasons in Detroit. "That made me a better person. But it was a tough experience.''

Large understatement there. Reminds me of a day a few years ago and a question innocently (stupidly is more like it) put to Archie Manning -- did he miss the Saints when he left there in 1983 after playing for them the better part of a dozen years?

The look on Archie's face at that moment could only be described as incredulous. ''You are joking, right?'' he had said. "Did I miss those seasons we had?''

So Joey isn't joking one bit when he says he is "enjoying playing football again.''

To say he was all but tarred and feathered in Detroit is putting too kind a face on it. A few people championed him. Lots more were glad to see him go. Now in one weekend the whole thing has flipped. Harrington surely isn't a hero near the rank of Taylor or Brown or Zach Thomas, or, for that matter, that revitalized offensive line, but it takes better than an empty hand to throw three touchdowns in a victory over the Bears.

JUDGMENT QUESTIONED

One little quote keeps insinuating itself back into South Florida. Not from Harrington. About him. That quote came from some unidentified source in the NFL, who said, 'Every time I see Harrington play, there are at least a couple of plays where I wonder, `What could he have been thinking?' ''

Harrington threw two interceptions against the Bears. So? How many QBs who ever saw heavy duty would have been immune to that same question? The mind makes promises the arm isn't always bound to keep, no matter what QB you are.

''Interceptions are going to happen,'' Harrington says mildly. "You want to stay aggressive, just don't do anything stupid.''

He says, in exactly the same words Nick Saban uses, "When something bad happens, you play through it.''

It's beginning to look like Harrington has a chance to do just that. This is a good guy, too. Wouldn't it be nice if one of these crazy days became nothing more than normal for Harrington and the Dolphins?