Evaluating Sam Howell’s performance against the Broncos
Breaking down the performance of QB Sam Howell in the Commanders win over the Broncos.
Sam Howell and the Washington Commanders pulled off another comeback victory after turning a 21-3 deficit into a 35-33 win over the Denver Broncos. For his part, Howell completed 27/39 passes for 299 yards and two touchdowns. I thought it was a solid overall performance that, much like last week against the Cardinals, had some things he’ll need to correct and improve on, but largely showed he has plenty of talent.
I had a number of plays I wanted to highlight, so I’m just going to go through them in order of which they happened. Let’s take a closer look at Howell’s performance.
The first play that stood out came on the Commanders opening drive. On third and nine, the Commanders motion to a three by one formation and run a variation of a Sail concept that they call Seattle. Terry McLaurin on the outside runs a pivot route, selling a shallow crossing route before pivoting back outside. In the slot, Dyami Brown runs a deep post designed to clear out the defense. Jahan Dotson is the receiver that motions across the formation and runs the Seattle route, which is designed to look like an over route before suddenly breaking back outside.
Dotson does a nice job selling the over and then breaking outside into open space vacated by Brown’s deeper route. Howell has time in the pocket to reach the top of his drop and then sit there for a moment. He perhaps takes a beat too long and could have anticipated Dotson breaking open slightly earlier than he did, but the throw itself was still a good one. It was particularly good considering the defender closing on him and preventing him from fully stepping into the throw.
Howell still stood there and took the incoming hit to deliver the ball and pick up the first down, which is a huge positive that he is willing to put his body on the line to make the throw and not shy away from contact. Ideally though, you’d like to see that pass come out just a fraction earlier so that the defensive lineman has to pull up or risk a penalty.
Last week I looked at the sacks Howell took and his general play and came to the conclusion that he does need to speed up the process just a little bit. There are times when it’s good but there are times when it's just a tick slow and that leads to him holding onto the ball for too long and exposing himself to sacks and hits. That previous play was one example of it, here’s another.
On this play, we see the Commanders work out of an empty set with an arrow concept to the right, which they likely call Tampa, and a choice route by Jahan Dotson to the left. Howell looks to his left off the snap, working the choice route to Dotson. Choice routes are different from normal routes because with a normal route, the quarterback knows when the receiver is going to break and which way they’re breaking, so they can deliver the throw before the break if they throw with anticipation. With a choice route though, the receiver has to read the coverage and decide if he’s going to break inside, outside or sit down.
Howell looks to Dotson and waits for him to make his choice. Dotson slow plays his release to allow the other receiver to go first and create traffic. He then gets deep into the route to sell a break inside before sharply cutting out towards the sideline. If Howell had been decisive in that moment, he could have made that throw out towards the sideline and let Dotson turn up the field for a first down. You can see how strongly he considers it when he pats the ball before starting his throwing motion. However, for some reason he turns it down. Perhaps he didn’t like the angle and was worried the defender would undercut it, I’m not sure. But having stayed with the route for a while waiting for Dotson to break open, he’s then late to work elsewhere once he turns that route down.
Howell likely knows his error and that’s why once he turned down the route, he instantly took off scrambling to his right. Unfortunately, the defensive end from the back side eventually works around left tackle Charles Leno and chases down Howell from behind for the sack. I saw many people blame Leno for that sack, but that is the type of sack that is on Howell. He had the opportunity to get the ball out on time to a receiver that was breaking open. That ball has to come out in that situation because the offensive line can only be expected to protect for so long.
Like last week though, Howell showed he’s capable of moving on from his mistakes quickly and bouncing back with some strong plays.
This time we see Howell speed things up a bit. At the snap, Howell initially looks to his left to try and find Terry McLaurin. However an underneath zone defender sinks unto the throwing window. Howell could potentially wait for McLaurin to clear that defender and run into the second throwing window, but he knows that his process has been taking too long at times. So instead, he decisively moves onto his next read.
Howell works back to his right side where he spots tight end Logan Thomas bending his route inside after working up the seam. Howell again stands strong in the pocket despite an incoming defender and delivers a strike over the middle of the field to hit Thomas in stride for a nice gain and a first down.
The speed of processing is still a work in progress from Howell. As we’ve seen, there are times when it’s a bit slow and it leads to him taking hits or sacks and then there are times like this when he’s quick and decisive and the ball comes out on time. Progress in this regard isn’t linear, it won’t be a case of every play will get a little bit better. There will be some plays where he is extremely comfortable with the concept called and work through it quickly and there will be others where he’s not as familiar with the concept or the defense shows him a look he hasn’t seen before and he has to take a bit longer to process that. So it will be up and down for a while, which it was in this game.
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