In a first-person essay for The Cauldron, Harrington calls his NFL career “a huge success” for what his football days did for his current life. While he may be well off now, there was a time where Harrington struggled, and that was during his days in Detroit. He says those years “ruined him.”
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“The four years I spent [with the Lions] absolutely crushed me,” he writes. “By the time I left, I was a shell of the player I once was.”
He writes about asking the coach if he could get permission to throw the ball down the field, and he eventually “imploded mentally.” Harrington adds his teammates lost respect for him.
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Look, Rod,” I said. “If you want me to be here, I will be here, because I respect you, and I respect Matt. But with the exception of one or two guys in that locker room … the rest of them can go to hell.
At that point, I felt like I’d given everything, had sacrificed for my teammates, and all they’d done was hang me out to dry. The day everything happened with Dre’ Bly — the scapegoat saga — only two people came up to me and said anything: One guy in the locker room, and the chef in the cafeteria.
Harrington went on to have short stints with the Dolphins, Falcons and Saints before leaving the NFL for good after eight seasons.
