See the title of this post and see if you can guess why Joey Harrington isn't happy. According to Steve Wyche's newest article, Pet Rhino hadn't even informed Joey Joe Joe about it before the media knew and started lobbing question grenades at him. Poor Joey.
I think a lot of the concerns here can be summed up by the fact that Pet Rhino has absolutely no interpersonal skills. I imagine when his children used to ask him to tell them a bedtime story, he'd go over the playbook and then tell them they were benched in favor of the neighbor's kids. I think he didn't tell Joey he wasn't starting because he already said it, albeit several weeks ago. Why, he likely reasons, should I have to tell the guy twice that Byron Leftwich is the starter no matter what?
The problem is that it needs to be re-stated, especially after Joey "led" the team to victory two games in a row (more on that in a second). It's not really fair to ask your quarterback to find out the chronically injured Fat Albert lookalike is taking his job back from the media. No matter what the personnel move is, the head coach should be telling the players involved that their roles have changed, not the guy with the notepad and donut glaze stuck to his shirt.
That being said, I think the switch to Leftwich makes a lot of sense. Joey has been downright mediocre for a good long while now, and the chances of him bombing spectacularly in a game and singlehandedly killing the Falcons are greater than the chances of him saving us. Is Leftwich necessarily any better? No, but I think the team needs to know if he is. His very small sample of playing time is not conducive to figuring out if he'll have any kind of role with the team next year. I know we're only two games out of first, but our offense is going to be very hard pressed to get us into the playoffs, much less through them.
If Leftwich ends up stinking, you can always pull him for Joey, anyways.