Evaluating Sam Howell's performance against the 49ers

Breaking down the performance of Commanders QB Sam Howell against the 49ers

After a tumultuous week for the Washington Commanders with their quarterback situation, Sam Howell eventually took the field on Sunday to start against the San Francisco 49ers. Ron Rivera announced last week that Sam Howell’s struggles in recent weeks was going to see him benched in favor of Jacoby Brissett, only for Brissett to get injured on Friday. Due to that injury, the Commanders were forced to go back to Howell just a few days after publicly benching him. 

To his credit, Howell battled hard and actually had his best game in a few weeks. He showed some progress in areas he’d been struggling with recently, but also showed he still has a long way to go. Howell ended the game completing 17 of 28 passes for 169 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions. That looks bad on paper but until his first interception early in the fourth quarter, Howell and the offense were in the game and moving the ball nicely. The offense was much more balanced, leaning more on Brian Robinson and the run game along with hitting some nice screen passes to pick up some chunk plays. 

With that support from the other parts of the offense, Howell appeared to gain some confidence, knowing he didn’t have to carry the offense himself. With that confidence, Howell started to do the simple things that had eluded him over the past few weeks, such as speeding up his mental process and getting the ball out efficiently. 

On this play, the Commanders run a pair of quick game concepts on either side of the formation. To the left, Howell has a slant-flat combination known as dragon, designed to beat man coverage. To his right, Howell has a spacing combination designed to beat zone. Now Howell gets his pre-snap read slightly wrong here; the 49ers show a split safety coverage pre-snap and stick with it post-snap. The dragon concept to Howell’s left is typically one that quarterbacks are taught to work against single-high coverage looks as that increases the likelihood of it being man coverage. But despite it being a split safety coverage, Howell works to his left at the snap anyway, but he critically doesn’t linger on his mistake. He quickly progresses through both options to his left and recognizes his mistake. 

Howell does well to quickly progress back to the other side of the field, where he spots tight end Logan Thomas spotting up over the middle and pivoting slightly back outside away from coverage. Howell drops his arm angle, allowing him to get the ball out on time without fully aligning his feet and finding Thomas for a completion that kept the Commanders ahead of the chains. 

Now this might seem like basic stuff and it largely is, but it’s stuff Howell has struggled with in recent weeks. He’s been lingering on reads too long and not taking the easy completions that the defense gives him. Last week he’d have panicked after getting the initial read wrong and either tried to force the ball to the slant anyway or scrambled to try and make a big play to make up for his mistake. This week, he did a much better job staying calmer in the pocket and finding the right receiver to get the ball to. 

This is another example of Howell taking what’s given to him and playing on time within the structure of the offense. Again this is basic stuff that Howell was doing really well earlier in the season but for whatever reason he really has struggled with in the last few weeks. The Commanders have a scissors concept to the right of the formation and a drive concept to the left. At the snap of the ball, Howell looks to his right to read the scissors concept. The 49ers drop into a Tampa-2 coverage and the safety takes the post route while the outside corner sinks back smartly underneath the corner route. 

With the first two options covered, Howell works back towards the middle of the field, where he spots the basic cross of the drive concept matched by the Mike linebacker in the Tampa-2 hole. Howell quickly progresses on to Brian Robinson, who was initially in as part of the protection scheme but then released out and worked against the flow of the play to complete a middle triangle read. Howell finds Robinson on time and in stride, allowing Robinson to secure the pass and then burst up the sideline, getting a solid gain and leaving the Commanders in a third and manageable situation. 

These couple of plays that Howell found some timing and rhythm, along with not needing to carry the offense all by himself, appeared to give him great confidence. On the very next play, Howell showed a flash of that talent that we saw more often earlier in the season, the talent that suggested perhaps he could be a quarterback to build around going forward. 

This play is one of Howell’s better plays of the season to date. The Commanders break the huddle and immediately align in an empty formation. Howell then signals for running back Antonio Gibson to motion back into the backfield, giving Howell a pre-snap man/zone indicator from the defense. Howell likes what he sees from the 49ers, as they rotate a safety back deep and have the other rotate down over the third receiver to the right of the formation. With that look, Howell calls an audible. You can see him looking to his receivers to his right and making a signal, grabbing his left shoulder with his right hand, likely telling the group to adjust their routes to a slot fade combination. 

After making the signal, Howell is ready to snap the ball. He now has Terry McLaurin in the slot running a slot fade concept against what he thinks is man coverage. If he’s right, he should have his top target working one-on-one against a slot corner with plenty of space to run into on the outside. As he snaps the ball, Howell quickly checks to his left and then gets his eyes in the middle of the field to check the safety rotation. He recognizes he is indeed correct with his pre-snap read and does have man coverage. His look left and then to the middle helps him hold the deep safety in the middle of the field, ensuring McLaurin is purely one-on-one against the slot corner. Howell then immediately turns to his right and pulls the trigger. He delivers a dime down the sideline to McLaurin, dropping it perfectly over his shoulder for a 42-yard gain. 

A few plays later, Howell hit McLaurin on a back-shoulder fade to end the drive with a touchdown and level the game at 10-10. His confidence appeared to grow even further as the game progressed and he even showed some progress against blitz looks that have troubled him this season. 

The important thing to note on this play is the process rather than the result. The ball ends up incomplete but the process from Howell is good and much improved from earlier in the season. On this play, the 49ers look to send a blitz to overload the right side of the Commanders offensive line. Before the snap, however, Howell spots the blitz and adjusts his protection. He points to his right where he sees the blitz coming and has both the offensive line and the running back slide that way in order to get everything picked up. Howell has been very inconsistent in spotting blitzes and adjusting protections at the line of scrimmage this season. There have been a few highs, like his game against the Patriots, and plenty of lows, like the first game against the Giants among others, but here we see him have a nice rep at diagnosing a blitz and getting it picked up. 

With every rusher accounted for, Howell should have more time in the pocket to find an open receiver down the field. The protection holds up pretty well overall, but Nick Bosa gives right tackle Trent Scott a tough battle on the edge, like he does with every tackle he rushes against. Howell just began to pat the ball, a common signal that he’s preparing to throw the ball, as he looked Jahan Dotson over the middle, but unfortunately Bosa then arrived to disrupt him. Howell attempts to step up to avoid Bosa’s rush, which he just about manages, but then he finds another rusher in his face. He quickly looks to get rid of the ball to his checkdown, but misses the throw while under pressure. 

Ultimately, the ball fell incomplete, but the process of identifying the blitz pre-snap and adjusting the protection to ensure he had every rusher accounted for is a big step forward for Howell. He’s struggled with that all season and obviously he’ll need to prove he can do it more consistently going forward, but this was a positive rep in that regard. 

While he was making progress in identifying blitzes and getting them picked up, he didn’t lose his gut instinct to buy himself more time and make bigger plays down the field. 

Here, the Commanders look to run a sail concept they’ve run all season, with Curtis Samuel running what’s known as a Seattle route. It’s designed to look like a crossing route over the middle before sharply breaking back outside like a sail route. The 49ers only rush four, but get some strong push against the left guard and right tackle. Howell is forced to drift backwards and to his left slightly to avoid that pressure and buy himself and Samuel some time for the route to develop. By drifting slightly but not panicking and immediately taking off scrambling, Howell is able to give Samuel time to run his route and break open. He then delivers a fantastic throw (the end zone replay angle is the best view of it) to find Samuel down the field for a big completion. 

Unfortunately though, while Howell had plenty of positives and played well for the first three quarters of the game, his performance dropped off when he threw his first interception. Turnovers are never good, but Howell’s first interception came at the end of a promising drive that looked like it might get the Commanders within one score of the 49ers early in the fourth quarter. It completely destroyed the momentum Howell and the offense had built.

On this play, the Commanders look to run a smash concept to the right of the formation, with Terry McLaurin running a pivot route and Logan Thomas running a corner route from the slot over the top of it. The idea of this concept is to hopefully get some form of zone coverage where the outside zone defender is put in a bind between McLaurin and Thomas, allowing Howell to throw to the receiver the corner doesn’t cover. Unfortunately, the 49ers don’t play zone coverage and in fact, play Cover-0, which is pure man coverage while every available defender blitzes. 

The 49ers get a strong push with the Cover-0 blitz, forcing Howell to speed up his process to try and get the ball out before getting sacked. He gets to the top of his drop and tries to anticipate McLaurin breaking open back inside, trusting his top receiver to make a play for him. McLaurin has no chance, however, as the corner in coverage sat on McLaurin’s inside hip and was in perfect position to jump the route as McLaurin broke back inside. The throw was never really on and Howell ended up throwing it straight to a defender that didn’t drop the invitation to intercept him. 

The 49ers then drove their way down the field emphatically to score and put the game beyond the Commanders reach. Howell attempted to bring the team back, but on his second play after the first interception, Howell threw his second. 

Only Howell will know if he lost confidence after his first interception, but this play suggests he might have. Earlier in this post I talked about Howell playing with more rhythm and confidence, getting the ball out on time and much more efficiently. The second interception was an example of how he has been playing in recent weeks, where he’s struggled to play on time. Here the Commanders have two receivers to the right breaking off their routes beyond the first down marker, but at different depths. First Logan Thomas sits down in the middle of the field before Byron Pringle breaks off his route in the slot slightly deeper. 

At the snap of the ball, Howell checks Jahan Dotson isolated to his left, but then comes back to the middle of the field to work to Thomas. He’s maybe a fraction late to get to Thomas and that causes the timing of everything to be off. He hits the top of his drop and the ball should be out to Thomas if he wants to hit that route over the middle. By taking a hitch step to make that throw, he’s late in getting rid of the ball, which allows the coverage to close in around Thomas. Howell recognizes the problem and attempts to correct himself. He pulls the ball back down and then resets to throw to Pringle in the slot. Pringle was open if the throw was on time, but because everything is now out of sync, the ball is coming out much too late. 

With the ball coming out too late, the 49ers defenders are able to close in on Pringle too and cornerback Deommodore Lenoir jumps the route to intercept the pass and effectively end the game. By the time the Commanders got the ball back, there was less than four minutes remaining and the 49ers had a 17-point lead. 

Overall there were some promising signs from Howell that he was able to bounce back from a tough week where he had been benched and then suddenly forced to start. He built some confidence and got into a rhythm with the help of a run game and some nice screen passes. But unfortunately he made two critical errors in the fourth quarter and was punished for them both with interceptions, which ended any chances of the Commanders winning the game. 

It will be interesting now to see if Howell remains the starter for the final game of the season next week, or if he is once again benched. For me, I would just let him play out the season now, but I do wonder if Rivera will try and go to Brissett again if he’s healthy.