Evaluating Sam Howell’s performance vs the Cardinals
Breaking down the positives and negatives from Howell’s performance against Arizona
While it wasn’t necessarily pretty, the Washington Commanders came away with a victory from their opening game of the season. All attention was naturally on quarterback Sam Howell and Commanders new look offense under offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy. There were plenty of promising signs in preseason, but this was our first look at Howell in Bieniemy’s offense for a full game against an opponent actually game planning specifically for him.
Howell finished the game having completed 19 of 31 passes for 202 yards, one touchdown, one interception and one rushing touchdown. It’s not an outstanding stat line, but it’s not terrible either. To tell the full story of Howell’s performance, we need to review the All-22.
Howell, like most young quarterbacks, was largely up and down throughout the game. Inconsistency is to be expected from Howell, but one of his best traits is his ability to not get too high or low regardless of what happens on the field. Howell does a great job staying even-keeled which enables him to bounce back from the negative plays that naturally do happen for young quarterbacks. Howell had two big negative plays in this game but he showed the resilience to bounce back from them and not lose confidence.
The first really negative play from Howell was his interception. Calling this a huge negative feels harsh because he was a bit unlucky on the play, but the result was an interception so that’s always a negative. Howell is looking to hit Jahan Dotson on a play-action shot. Dotson is actually running a double move to start his route, selling an out route before breaking up the field as part of an out-and-up. He then gets to near midfield and breaks off his route, turning the route into an out-and-up-and-stop.
Howell executes the play-action fake and then gets to the top of his drop. At that point, he can see the double move helps widen the outside corner and gives Dotson space to work. Howell bounces at the top of his drop for a moment and then slides to his left slightly, feeling a little bit of pressure from his right. Really, he should have seen Dotson was well clear of the corner and the stop part of the route would help him stay clear of the safety over the top. He should be throwing the ball earlier than he did, but he waited for Dotson to make his break. This buys the pass rush an extra second to get closer to him and allows the second level defenders an extra second to drop back after the play-action fake.
Now, Howell does get unlucky because the ball gets tipped at the line of scrimmage, causing it to lose significant velocity and fall straight into the arms of linebacker Zaven Collins. However, I think he should have had the ball out earlier instead of waiting for Dotson to break. Perhaps this was a read route for the receiver where they had the choice to either keep running or break off the route, but I’ve not seen that paired with a double move like an out-and-up before. If that was the case, then Howell was justified in waiting for Dotson to break before throwing it. But I think it’s most likely that Howell should have had that ball out earlier, which would have likely meant the pass wouldn’t have been tipped and the linebacker wouldn’t have been in the same area.
However, after a negative play like that, Howell bounced back with a big positive on his first opportunity afterwards.
On the next drive, Howell’s first pass attempt came on a third and two situation. The Commanders align in a three by one formation with tight end Logan Thomas isolated to the right. Receiver Terry McLaurin motions across the formation outside of Thomas to even up the formation. From there, the Commanders run a pivot out from Curtis Samuel in the slot to the left and an adjusted dagger concept to the right.
Off the snap, Howell works to Samuel in the slot to his left as he’s just looking to pick up the first down and move the chains. However, Samuel is well covered as he pivots back outside, so Howell works back to his right. To that side, he spots McLaurin running free over the middle on his deep over route. He doesn’t hesitate and quickly pulls the trigger, finding McLaurin in the middle of the field with a nice pass that allows him to keep running after the catch and maximize the potential gain.
On the very next play, Howell had one of his best reps of the game.
Following that McLaurin catch, Bieniemy gives Howell another similar route to throw but from a different look. This time the Commanders work out of a two tight end set with both tight ends aligned to the left and both receivers aligned to the right. The receivers both run deep posts in order to clear out the defense while the tight ends both run crossing routes at different depths to work into that vacated space.
The Cardinals look to surprise Howell and the offensive line with a simulated pressure, dropping out an edge rusher and rushing a linebacker up the middle instead. The offensive line struggles initially to pick it up as left tackle Charles Leno commits to the edge rusher leaving left guard Saahdiq Charles and center Nick Gates occupied by the two interior defensive lineman. However, Sam Cosmi does an excellent job recognizing the problem from right guard and sliding across to try and pick up the linebacker.
For his part, Howell feels the pressure coming but doesn’t panic. He calmly steps to his right and up in the pocket, allowing Cosmi to shove the linebacker outside and beyond him. Howell keeps his eyes down the field and finds Cole Turner on the deep over route with an excellent pass for another big chunk of yards.
At that point, it appeared Howell was very much over the interception and in fact was full of confidence. The offense started to get going at that point but unfortunately the momentum was killed by Antonio Gibson fumbling on the next play.
Howell’s other big negative play came just before the halftime interval.
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