Evaluating QB Sam Howell's 2020 season
Breaking down how Commanders fifth-round pick Sam Howell performed in 2020.
The Washington Commanders drafted quarterback Sam Howell with the first of their two fifth-round picks. Howell was projected to be one of the top quarterbacks in this draft class going into the 2021 season after a strong 2020 season at North Carolina. However, he lost his top two receivers, top two running backs and three of his starting five offensive lineman to the 2021 NFL draft and appeared to take a step back last season. Despite that, most draft analysts expected him to go in the second-round, so to see him fall all the way to the fifth-round was a surprise for everyone and provided value Washington just couldn’t pass up.
With such a change in play from his 2020 season to his 2021 season, I thought I’d write up two posts on him. This first post will look at his 2020 season exclusively, evaluating him based on that alone. The second post, coming later this week, will look at his 2021 season to see what changed after losing most of his offense. So let’s dig into his 2020 season.
To start with, the first thing that stands out when watching Howell is his deep passing. He throws an excellent deep ball with plenty of arm and touch to deliver the ball wherever he needs to. The North Carolina offense was not afraid to call and take shots in 2020, especially with deep threats like Washington’s third-round pick in 2021 Dyami Brown on the outside. Whenever they got a receiver isolated one-on-one against a corner, they were looking to take a shot and Howell was good enough to deliver.
In the first play of this clip, North Carolina gets Brown isolated against a cornerback to the left of the formation. Brown runs a go route and Howell wants to go there immediately. However, from the end zone angle, you can see Howell executes his play-action fake and immediately looks to the right side, holding the deep safety in the middle of the field to ensure Brown only has one defender to worry about. Once Howell confirms the safety is in the middle of the field, he quickly sets up and delivers a glorious throw to Brown with plenty of velocity to drive it down the field and hit him in stride for the touchdown.
On the second play of the clip, Howell gets a similar look, with a receiver isolated to the right side of the formation. Once again he looks away from the go route off the snap to hold the deep safety before setting up to deliver the throw. This time Howell puts a little more touch on the throw, dropping it over the receivers shoulder in stride for another deep touchdown.
The ability to drive throws down the field and put touch on them is obviously an attractive trait, but there’s plenty of other things to like about Howell’s game from his 2020 season. Something that stood out to me was how quickly he could set up and deliver a throw, especially coming from a run fake or on a RPO (run-pass option) where he has to extend the ball out to the running back and then quickly flip his hips to get aligned to throw.
Here Howell looks to throw a curl or stop route off a play-action fake. Watch from the end zone angle and you’ll see how Howell receives the shotgun snap, opens himself to the back to execute the fake and then quickly manages to flip his hips in the total opposite direction. He gets his feet sorted out perfectly, aligning to his target with a nice wide and solid base and is able to instantly transition into delivering an accurate throw. That throw comes out with good anticipation and timing too, as he releases the ball before the receiver breaks off, with the placement also being excellent, leading the receiver outside away from the defender playing with inside leverage.
It might have appeared like an easy throw, but mechanically it was very testing and he managed it superbly, getting his hips flipped, feat aligned and ball out on time with great placement. It’s very effective in allowing him to adjust quickly, especially in certain situations in the game.
On this play, Florida State tries to bring a cornerback blitz off the right side of the line. Most offenses will have an adjustment for receivers to peel off and run a quick hitch or stop route behind a corner blitz, giving the quarterback a quick hot route to throw to if he spots the blitz coming. Here, Howell does spot the blitz early and shows off his quick set up and release to deliver the throw over the corner before he can get to him, allowing his receiver to secure the pass before the safety can get across to cover for the corner blitz.
All of that is very positive and should give Howell an advantage with quick game concepts in the NFL. However, it’s not all about quick set up and throw. NFL quarterbacks have to be able to drop back, work through a progression tied to their footwork and find the open receiver. Howell can do this too.
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