the harrington predicament

First, Joey Harrington is not a brilliant quarterback. At best he is mediocre. More reasonably he is a low level NFL starter, and probably better suited to a backup role. That said, he is not as terrible as everyone makes him out to be. Having lived in this lovely city of Atlanta, and having been through the Vick fallout, I have heard all angles of the "Harrington blows" commentary. Sure, we should have kept Matt Schaub. Sure Michael Vick won more games (did he?). And sure Harrington is not the long term solution at quarterback. But he should have at least been given the chance to start 16 games for a shitty Falcons team. With the exception of detroit (which still hasnt proven to be anything other then the worst team in the NFL, 7 wins notwithstanding), the hook has come awfully quickly for old Joe. And so, I present for you dear reader, the stats upon which one may more fairly compare Harrington against some of his NFL peers. (parentheses and such to keep stats seperate, since the formatting hates me here)

Player (Comp %) TD (Int) Yds/Game (QB rating)
A (60.0) 12 (11) 207.7 (77.6)

B (61.8) 7 (8) 184.6 (77.2)

C (56.1) 23 (20) 208.5 (73.9)

D (66.4) 9 (9) 203.7 (87.2)

E (62.3) 9 (17) 169.7 (71.1)


Now that we have several lines of stats above, let's play a fun little game of match the quarterback. You can see the numbers; here are the rest of the facts. First, the names. The five quarterbacks listed above are (in no particular order): Joey Harrington, Matt Schaub, Jason Campbell, Vince Young, and Eli Manning. I recognize that none of these quarterbacks are necessarily among the current elite at their position, however three of them did play for playoff teams in 2007 (Campbell, Young, Manning), one of them won a super bowl (Manning, obviously), and the non-playoff QB not named Harrington is the guy constantly mentioned as the one who got away right before the vick saga began (Schaub). All that said, the numbers are strikingly similar for the most part. None of the TD/Int ratios impress, and one is downright putrid. The yards per game are similar, the difference more a product of the teams offensive style (pass attempts per game) than anything else. And only one QB has a completion percentage and QB rating (like we know what the fuck that is) that inspires confidence. Sure, Vince Young rushes for yards. 26.3 per game last year to be exact. Not exactly enough to account for the win differential between the Titans and Falcons. The point is this- an NFL team can survive with a mediocre quarterback. A team with other units which stack up against NFL competition might even win a super bowl with a mediocre quarterback. The Giants did. And the Bears before them got pretty close. Harrington is not and never would have been a pro-bowl quarterback. But he was an probably remains serviceable for a decent team. And that is all I aim to say. Schaub would not have done better in Atlanta last year. Vick likely wouldnt have either. A shitty team is a shitty team, regardless of who takes the snaps.

As for an answer key-
A- Jason Campbell
B- Joey Harrington
C- Eli Manning
D- Matt Schaub
E- Vince Young