Let me get this out of the way early so I don’t confuse anyone: Joey Harrington is not a good quarterback. But is he as bad as last year’s 6-10 record? Yes.

Joey’s just never adjusted to the speed of the NFL game. His arm isn’t big enough, or accurate enough, to make the tough throws, and his reads are routinely bad. That said, he almost snatched a victory out of last week’s T-Bay game that should have seen the Lions already in the lead when the 4th quarter started. Right now he’s doing just enough to help them lose.

But the Lions’ biggest problem isn’t Harrington; right now it’s the receivers, notably Charles Rogers, who has Steve Mariucci reaching for the Tums.

Rogers, a 2002 1st round pick, has done absolutely nothing since putting on an NFL uniform. He was out for the season last year with a broken collarbone, and missed the ‘03 campaign with the same injury. He’s big, he’s supposed to be fast, and he’s supposed to have soft hands. Right now the only thing he’s showing is a complete inability to play football at the professional level.

Rogers is lazy, runs the wrong routes, refuses to make adjustments to his QB, and, frequently, just plain out-and-out drops the ball. We know he’s quick, but speed doesn’t seem to be part of his game. He dogs it on the field and his refusal to fight for the ball means ints. for Joey.

Roy Williams is kind of a different story. He’s clearly a huge talent at wideout, but he’s made some plays this year that have to start you thinking that he’s not happy with Harrington at QB. There was a play in the Bears’ game a few weeks back where Roy was supposed to run a corner in the endzone, but changed his mind and tracked the post. The problem was it was a timing play and the ball was already in the air. The result was an easy interception and Harrington was miffed. Williams didn’t seem to care. In fact he stood on the sidelines with Rogers and chatted it up with him.

Rogers was just suspended 4 games for violating the NFL’s substance abuse policy, but he’s locked in as a #3 receiver right now. With Mike Williams actually trying out there I’d say there’s a good chance Rogers pouts and whines his way out of town.

Joey’s going to be the QB until Jeff Garcia comes back around mid-season. You can bet there’s going to be a huge blowup on the sidelines one of these days if Joey doesn’t start making better throws, or his receivers don’t start laying out for balls.