Dolphins showed template for slowing down Howell, Commanders offense
Evaluating Sam Howell’s performance against the Dolphins
The Washington Commanders continued to struggle as the team fell to 4-9 after losing to the Miami Dolphins on Sunday. Head coach Ron Rivera taking over for the fired Jack Del Rio didn’t help improve things defensively, which means the focus of the rest of this season is even more on young quarterback Sam Howell. Howell, like the rest of the team, struggled throughout the game completing just 12 of 23 passes for 127 yards and an interception.
It was by far his worst statistical output of the season, with season lows in attempts, completions, completion percentage, yards and yards per attempt. He did manage to rush for two touchdowns and convert a two-point attempt, but they were little consolation in an overall poor outing from the offense. The Dolphins had a strong plan of how to attack Howell and shut down the Commanders offense and Washington struggled to respond.
This clip contains four examples of the Dolphins using the same type of blitz throughout the game and having success with each rep. It’s a look you all should be familiar with by now as every team is running it against Washington and having success doing so. The Dolphins line up four defensive lineman on the line of scrimmage and have a linebacker join the rush from one side of the line. Sometimes the Dolphins used it as a five-man blitz, like in the first play of this clip, sometimes they had the defensive end on the opposite side of the linebacker drop off into coverage, like on the final three plays of this clip.
The issue with these blitzes for the Commanders is they aren’t accounting for the linebacker adding on. In most protection schemes, the offensive line is responsible for the four down defensive lineman and one other player, typically the Mike (middle) linebacker or another player based on the game plan and protection scheme being used. On all four of these plays, the offensive line isn't expecting the linebacker to join the rush, which means when he does, the team is overloaded on that side.
Now, it’s important to note that the post-snap process on each of these plays is actually correct. When you get caught with an overload on one side of the line, you want the offensive lineman to squeeze inside and leave the rusher on the edge with the furthest path to the quarterback free. That means the quarterback is then responsible for beating that free rusher by either throwing the ball quickly over him or scrambling to avoid him. This is exactly what happens on all four plays, with Howell correctly getting the ball out to the flat on the first and third plays of the clip, scrambling on the second play and then having his pass batted down on the fourth play.
So the post-snap process is actually ok from both the offensive line and Howell on these plays. It actually shows good progress from Howell as earlier in the season these looks were resulting in him taking sacks when he had quick throws available. However, the next step in his development is learning to identify these looks pre-snap and adjusting the protection to slide into them. If the line slides into these rushes, Howell shouldn’t have to rush the checkdown to the flat and have time to actually read the defense and work into whatever concept has been called.
Unfortunately though, Howell isn’t there yet in his development, and the Dolphins took advantage of that. They kept using this look throughout the game to force Howell to throw hot into the flat, where they could quickly rally up and make the tackle for a very minimal gain at best. Howell and the Commanders will need to find a way to identify these looks pre-snap otherwise more teams will follow the template set by the Dolphins in this game.
Because of that, the offense became extremely reliant on Howell’s ability to create plays off-script.
This was a nice play by Howell going off-script. The Commanders bring Jahan Dotson in motion across the field to join a bunch set to the right. That bunch set then executes a popular concept across the league. Kyle Shanahan calls it arches, Sean McVay calls it quick seam. The tight end at the point of the bunch runs a clearing corner route to vacate space underneath while Curtis Samuel on the outside runs a shallow cross to drag the coverage inside with him. This leaves Dotson to run his route that is designed to look like a choice route before breaking inside.
The Dolphins play a bit of a trick here on Howell, showing man coverage by having a defender follow Dotson in motion across the field before then dropping back into zone coverage. Regardless, this isn’t a man/zone read type of play, it’s intended to go to Dotson. He looks to Dotson but finds a defender sitting on the route. Just as Dotson breaks inside, the defender is still on top of him and Howell feels pressure arriving from his blind side. This causes Howell to spin out and scramble to his left. He does a great job running away from the pressure and keeping his eyes down the field. He spots Samuel continuing his shallow crossing route and turning up the sideline. Howell does a great job making an awkward throw and hits Samuel down the sideline for a nice gain.
This was far from the only nice play Howell made off-script.
This time the Commanders runs another core west coast offense concept. To the left, they have a sail concept and to the right they have a drive concept, with McLaurin on the shallow cross and Logan Thomas on the basic cross behind it. Antonio Gibson is the final option on the play, checking protection before working through the offensive line and then bursting out against the flow of the rest of the play. As the ball is snapped, Howell initially works to his left looking to hit the sail concept. The slot corner plays with outside leverage and has a safety over the top, so that’s not available.
Howell then works back across the field to the drive concept. The Dolphins have a hole player in place to cut McLaurin’s shallow cross which takes that option away, but Logan Thomas does break open on his deeper basic cross. When I first watched the play, I felt Howell could have made that throw with some better anticipation. However, on a closer look I think Howell felt that pressure off the right side just as that throwing window became an option. With that pressure, Howell had to scramble out to his right to avoid the sack. As he does so, he spots Gibson working to the flat and signals for him to work deeper. Howell then finds Gibson down the sideline and Gibson makes a nice adjustment to a slightly off-target throw to complete the play.
A better throw from Howell there might have even resulted in a touchdown for Gibson, but sometimes those throws on the run can just drift away from the target a little bit. If we’re being critical, you’d like to see a better throw that lets Gibson run onto it with tons of space to run into, but it’s harsh to be overly critical when Howell made the play possible in the first place by scrambling, avoiding a sack and telling Gibson to work down the field.
Howell’s off-script plays weren’t limited to throws either.
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