The Harrington Family Foundation

By Vic Carucci
National Editor, NFL.com


(Aug. 29, 2003) -- Details. Details. Details.

Joey Harrington, who is about to begin his second season as quarterback of the Detroit Lions, thinks about them constantly. He talks about them incessantly. Heck, he probably dreams about them nightly.

Check those feet. Are your eyes giving anything away? Watch how you're bending those legs. Are you making the proper read progression?

If it all seems a little obsessive … well, it is. As far as Harrington is concerned, it has to be because his coach, Steve Mariucci, won't have it any other way.

Remember what you're supposed to do on your delivery. Are your shoulders turned the right way? Make sure you're looking off the right guy. Do you know where the blitz is coming from? What are your linemen doing? How about your receivers?

"Coach Mariucci is very detail-oriented, and as a quarterback, you have know every detail -- the details that are so vital to winning football games," Harrington said. "The difference between winning and losing in this league is not very much when you look at the scoreboard. And those are the kind of little details that make the difference."

"Quarterbacking's not just, 'Throw the ball over to that guy and make a couple of yards,' " Mariucci said. "It's footwork and it's eyes and it's mechanics and it's fundamentals of the position and it's progressions and system and knowledge of it all. It's being detailed with everything that he does."

After the Lions' 3-13 finish in 2002, certainly there is no shortage of areas, small or large, for everyone on the team to improve.

But the one player whose progress since last season is under the greatest scrutiny -- and is likely to have the greatest impact on the Lions' ability to rise from the league's cellar -- is Harrington. Not only is the former Oregon star the starting quarterback, the focal-point position, but he was the third overall pick of the 2002 NFL Draft. He was expected to play a major role in the franchise's efforts to climb to respectability.

So far, Harrington is still operating on far more potential than production. As a rookie, he made 12 starts (the first coming only three games into the season) and two relief appearances. It is hardly enough playing time from which one can make definitive conclusions, but it wasn't all that pretty, either. Harrington completed 50.1 percent of his passes. He threw for 12 touchdowns while being intercepted 16 times. His passer rating of 59.9 was at the bottom of the league among starting quarterbacks.

Harrington did lead the Lions to victories in three of his first six starts, yet after that he seemed overwhelmed by increasingly difficult challenges of solving opposing defenses and understanding the many complexities of Detroit's offense. On top it all, Harrington's season was cut short when he underwent what he described as routine surgery to correct an irregular heartbeat.

In his first year as the Lions' coach, Mariucci's job is much bigger than helping Harrington to become a better quarterback. However, quarterbacking is Mariucci's area of expertise. Anything he is able to do to upgrade Harrington's game is likely to go a long way toward upgrading the team's record.

That was why, on the first day of the Lions' first offseason minicamp, Mariucci had Harrington, the other quarterbacks and all of the receivers working on every conceivable detail concerning the concept of one route. Not the philosophy of the offense or the passing game in general. Not even a couple of different plays or formations. Just a route concept.

"And he hammered it," Harrington said. "We spent an entire drill period on one single route concept over and over and over. He put every receiver through it and every quarterback through it. And we had very specific points of emphasis during our camp sessions.

"What do you do versus man? What do you do versus zone? What do you do versus bump? What do you do versus bail? Every single possible thing that could ever come up. He hammered it with every single receiver and quarterback."

Harrington seems to be catching on. So does his new favorite target, former Michigan State receiver Charles Rogers, the second overall pick of the 2003 NFL Draft.

For the most part, Harrington has shown good poise and command of the offense during the preseason. His best outing of the summer came in what the Lions considered their tune-up for the regular season -- a 38-17 victory against Cleveland on Aug. 23 -- when he completed 15 of 20 passes for 184 yards and a touchdown, with one interception.

"I feel more comfortable," Harrington said. "Last year you'd see at times I'd get choppy feet. I'd get sloppy in mechanics. And that was because I wasn't always sure what was going on and I got a little bit nervous. When I get a little bit flustered, my feet will start to shuffle a little bit. But I'm noticing on film that my feet are a lot more consistent, which indicates to me that I'm feeling more comfortable in there."

"I see him more comfortable in the huddle, more aware of defenses, blitzes, audible situations," Mariucci said. "I see him poised, having intelligent conversation on the sideline during timeouts. I see him developing his leadership skills."

Harrington's teammates like the progress they see in him as well. They see greater maturity, as a person and an athlete, and a much better grasp of what to do and how to do it.

"He's stepping up to the plate and he's where he needs to be," veteran center Eric Beverly said. "You see the comfort. You can just tell, by body language and how he is in the huddle, that he's just comfortable back there. He's making plays and having fun."

But Mariucci cautions that Harrington is still a young quarterback. And for those expecting Harrington and Rogers to form a duo on the scale of Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, Harrington cautions that the desired results are "not going to come immediately" even though they have become more comfortable with each other since the start of training camp.

Nevertheless, Harrington recognizes the responsibility he has -- he must be much more than ordinary. Injuries at other positions, such as the separated shoulder running back James Stewart suffered in the Aug. 28 preseason finale against Buffalo, have put greater pressure on Harrington to produce at a higher level than he did as a rookie. He realizes there won't be much patience while he learns to become as detail-oriented as Mariucci wants him to be.

"I need to know these details now," Harrington said. "Not that I didn't before, but it's more imperative that I am in control and I am comfortable in there because our starting tailback is now gone and someone has to fill the hole.

"I don't ever think of anything less than completing every ball and winning every football game. That's the mentality every quarterback has to have as a leader. However, you're not going to complete every ball and you're not going to win every single game. But that's the mentality you have to have. The other thoughts don't even enter my head."

Given the many details he must know, there can't be room for much else.