Commanders Training Camp Review: Jahan Dotson Catch
Breaking down a catch by Jahan Dotson during Washington Commanders training camp practices.
We’re getting closer and closer to the NFL season beginning with the first preseason games this weekend. It will be nice to get some new All-22 footage to watch and breakdown over the weekend and into next week. But until then, we’ll have to make do with more footage from Washington Commanders training camp practice shot by fans in attendance.
Today I wanted to highlight a particular play I saw on Twitter yesterday from my friends over at the Redzone In The Lab podcast. Here’s the link to the clip:
https://twitter.com/redzoneinthelab/status/1689299968534753280?s=20
Note: Twitter no longer allows Substack to embed tweets (or Xeets, whatever the hell Elon Musk wants to call them now), so you’ll need to click on the link and it will open the clip in a separate tab.
The reason I wanted to highlight this particular play is because it shows some encouraging signs from Sam Howell. Let’s get the play drawn up and take a closer look.
This is the look we’re faced with at the start of the clip. The offense is working out of 11 personnel (one running back, one tight end, three receivers) and uses a trips set to the left. The interesting thing about this formation is that the tight end aligns outside the two receivers to the left and Terry McLaurin is the inside receiver of that group. Typically he’d be the receiver isolated on the other side of the formation, but on this play that role goes to Jahan Dotson instead.
On the other side of the ball, the defense is showing a heavy blitz look with seven defenders on the line of scrimmage. The four defensive lineman are joined by linebackers Cody Barton and Jamin Davis as well as safety Kam Curl as the defense looks to disguise its true intentions. The offense has to be ready to account for all seven and even possibly slot corner Benjamin St-Juste, who is also creeping inside and showing the potential to blitz. Obviously the offensive line can only account for five and with the running back in the backfield, they can pick up six. But with the tight end aligned outside, if the defense rushes any more than that, Sam Howell would be responsible for the extra rusher by having to get the ball out quickly.
With that laid out, there’s a few things for Howell to process before the ball is even snapped here. For a start, he has to know how many of the defenders on the line of scrimmage can be blocked by his offensive line and which defender(s) he’d need to be responsible for if the defense does send a big blitz. With that in mind, he’s probably thinking pre-snap that he needs to be ready to throw hot if the blitz comes.
But on top of that, Howell also knows what the offense is trying to do and has some indicators from the offensive alignment. With the tight end outside instead of a wide receiver, he gets a man-zone indicator pre-snap. Kendall Fuller is the outside corner over the top of the tight end, which indicates the defense is actually in a form of zone coverage. We can also see that from the fact that McLaurin is inside with Cody Barton as the closest defender to him. So Howell knows that while the defense could still blitz, we know that the Commanders do like a zone blitz, they are likely to be dropping multiple defenders into some form of zone coverage.
Here is the play the offense is looking to run. The tight end on the outside runs a pivot route, breaking inside initially before working back to the flat. Curtis Samuel runs a fade from the slot while Terry McLaurin works inside before sticking his foot in the ground and breaking back outside. Against man coverage, Howell would probably be looking to hit Samuel on the slot fade, but from the man-zone indicator he has pre-snap, he likely knows he’s getting some form of zone coverage. However, with the potential for a blitz to come, Howell knows his hot routes are McLaurin and the tight end, so that’s likely where he wants to look first just in case the defense does send a big blitz.
The big blitz look from the defense actually turns out to be a big bluff. They end up rushing just the four defensive lineman and playing a basic Cover-3 behind it. St-Juste, Barton, Davis and Curl all bail out from their blitz looks at the snap and sink into four underneath zones St-Juste and Curl work to the flat while Barton and Davis play middle hook zones. Kendall Fuller, Emmanuel Forbes and Darrick Forrest all sink back and make up the deep thirds of the Cover-3 structure.
When we overlap the coverage with the routes, we can see the issue that Howell has to process post-snap. Having possibly anticipated a blitz with his hot routes to his left, Howell looks left off the snap. However, with the defense bailing out into zone coverage, we can see that the defense actually matches up well with all three routes to that side of the field. Fuller sinks deep to match Samuel’s slot fade, St-Justes gets out to the flat to get on top of the tight end’s pivot route and Barton sinks back underneath McLaurin’s route. That might cause a lot of younger quarterbacks to panic and start to scramble, but Howell remains calm. He quickly recognizes the issue and moves off his read to his left and works back to his right, where he finds Dotson as he breaks into a hole in the coverage.
What’s also interesting about this play is Dotson’s route. He appears to be breaking inside with the intent to keep running across the middle, however as he looks back and makes eye contact with Howell, there appears to be an understanding that he needs to break off his route and sit in the hole in coverage. Howell appears to wait to make that eye contact with Dotson and then make the throw back outside, leading him away from the coverage. Now perhaps this was just the route that was called or an adjustment that had been discussed before the play, but either way it’s an extremely encouraging sign that Howell was not only able to work through the bluff from the defense, stay calm and progress through his reads, but also recognize where the space in the coverage was and lead his receiver into that space with the placement of the throw.
It is only one play, so we shouldn’t get overly excited or indeed negative over any single play we see from training camp. But it is a positive sign that Howell is understanding the offense and has a good connection with his receivers.