Lessons to be learned from Sam Howell's poor performance against the Giants
Breaking down Sam Howell's poor performance and what lessons he can learn from it
The Washington Commanders suffered their worst defeat of the season on Sunday to the New York Giants. That is quite the statement considering some of the other losses that this team has had this season, but losing at home to a two-win team playing a third string quarterback has to top the lot. Young quarterback Sam Howell had his worst performance since the previous game against the Giants back in Week 7, snapping what had been a nice run of games for him.
Howell completed 31 of 45 passes for 255 yards, one touchdown and three interceptions. He wasn’t helped by the fact the Commanders had three fumbles on offense too, which gave the Giants six total turnovers, but that shouldn’t deflect from Howell’s poor performance. Now as I’ve been saying all season, we can’t overreact either negatively or positively to Howell’s performances from week to week. Just like how it’s too early to call him a franchise quarterback after the last three strong performances, it’s also unfair to write them off after this game.
The important thing to note with a performance like this is to understand what mistakes were made, and what lessons can be learned from them. So with that in mind, let’s take a closer look at some of the mistakes that he made in this game and what lessons he can learn going forward.
This was Howell’s first interception of the game and it came on the Commanders opening drive. Washington lines up in a two by two formation with a double post concept to the right and two crossers coming from the left. The idea here is most probably to have those deep posts clear out the deep defenders and vacate space underneath for the deep crossing route from the other side. However, against the right look, the quarterback has the option to alert the post routes.
The Giants happen to be playing quarters coverage, which is the exact look that the double post concept is designed to beat. You can see here how the safety attaches to Logan Thomas’s route in the slot, which opens things up for Dyami Brown on the outside post. The read here from Howell is actually a good one. Having noticed the safety attached to Thomas, he knows he’ll have Brown one-on-one against the corner playing with outside leverage. The issue comes with the placement of the throw.
Brown angles his route inside towards the middle of the field, while Howell delivers the throw more vertically. It’s hard to know exactly who is at fault here without knowing exactly how it's taught, but I suspect given that Howell waited for Brown to break before making his throw, he should’ve had a better idea of the angle Brown was taking. Perhaps he was concerned about Thomas’s route inside coming into the equation, but only he will know that.
Ultimately, whoever was at fault, the disconnect led to Howell overthrowing Brown and giving the trailing defender a chance to make a play on the ball, which he did. Now obviously no interception is a good interception, especially on a play that could easily have become a huge 65-yard touchdown to start the game for Washington, but if you are going to throw an interception, throwing it 50 yards down the field and early in the game isn’t that harmful as it acted more like a good punt and there was still plenty of time in the game to recover from it.
That of course doesn’t excuse Howell, but in terms of lessons to be learned from this play, the process was good. Howell identified the correct coverage for the double post concept and took the correct shot. The issue was with execution. Had Howell thrown his ball on the right path for Brown to run onto, it probably results in a touchdown. So the lesson to learn from Howell here is to sync up his throw with the path of his deep receivers. We’ve seen him miss a number of these shots this season, though not typically by this much. That is something that will need to improve going forward.
The second interception is probably worse and one that Howell just can’t allow to happen.
On this play, the Giants are bringing an overload blitz to the left side of the Commanders offensive line. They disguise the blitz well, showing multiple defenders up on the line of scrimmage and dropping two off the right side into coverage while the slot corner joins the rush from the left. Facing third and 10 early in the fourth quarter, the Commanders call deeper routes to try and pick up a first down and keep the drive alive. To the left, Howell has a scissors concept while he has a dagger concept to his right.
Almost as soon as he snaps the ball, Howell recognizes he has an overload blitz to his left and doesn’t have the protection to account for it. He wisely takes off running to his right early, giving himself even time to get up to speed and run away from the free rusher while also buying his receivers time to work their routes down the field. As he rolls out to his right, Jahan Dotson spots Howell in trouble. Dotson was running the deep crosser to occupy defenders and open up the dagger for Terry McLaurin, but he does a good job understanding Howell needs help out to his right. So Dotson smartly adjusts his route and quickly cuts back outside. By doing this, Dotson beats the deep defender and is wide open down the field.
However, from Howell’s point of view, the route takes just a fraction too long to develop. Howell spots Dotson breaking back outside and sees an open field in front of him, so he begins to pull up in order to set his feet and deliver the throw. By pulling up, Howell invites the chasing defenders to close in on him. Those defenders get there quicker than Howell can make his throw, with his arm getting hit as he delivers the ball. This causes the pass to lose velocity and float in the air, giving the defenders in coverage a great opportunity to not only recover, but jump the route and secure the interception.
Now obviously, we don’t want to entirely tame the playmaking side of Howell’s game because it’s an important feature and as we’ve seen recently, it can significantly help the offense get out of bad spots. However, while we can all see exactly what Howell wanted to do here, he has to understand just how close the rush is to him and how long it will take him to deliver that type of pass down the field. If he could have made the throw on the run, it may well have ended up in a huge play, but by having to stop and set his feet, he invited the pressure and couldn’t get the pass away quick enough.
That interception was tough to take, but Howell and the Commanders did manage to find a way back into the game. Unfortunately, Howell then threw a third interception that killed the game.
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