Previewing the challenges Sam Howell could face from the Cardinals defense

Breaking down where opposing defenses might look to attack Howell and previewing the Cardinals defense

Commanders quarterback had a strong preseason but as we enter the regular season, opposing teams will be looking for weaknesses in his game to try and exploit. If there was one thing that teams might pick up on from his preseason performances it would be his ability to recognize blitzes and get them picked up. 

Now in general, I actually thought Howell did a good job working with center Nick Gates and getting things picked up in general, but he did take a few sacks, all of which were his fault rather than the offensive line. 

The first sack Howell took was in the preseason opener against the Browns. On this play, the Browns rush the slot corner and linebacker off the left side of the offensive line, while having the defensive end on the opposite side drop out into coverage. The offensive line are responsible for the four down defensive lineman and can also pick up the linebacker that blitzes. However, if any secondary player blitzes, like the slot corner, Howell is then responsible for that defender. 

After the game, I wrote that I thought Howell actually saw the slot corner and knew that he was responsible for him, which Howell confirmed after the game. However, I think he saw that the blitz would take a while to get there and he’d have the chance to throw over it to Jahan Dotson in the slot. What he didn’t expect was the safety working down to Dotson rather than carrying Curtis Samuel up the seam. My guess would be that safety threw him off and then he panicked a bit rather than calmly working to his running back in the flat as his checkdown. 

Now obviously Howell should have just taken the checkdown to the running back in the flat, but I think that’s a much easier error to correct than him not recognizing the blitz. The more worrying sack was the first sack he took against the Ravens. 

This blitz isn’t exactly the same as the one the Browns sacked Howell with, but it is a similar principle. The Ravens rush an extra defender off the right side and drop the edge rusher off the left side of the line. Again, I think Howell probably knows this rush is coming and the offensive line actually picks it up and handles it well. However, Howell shows that little bit of panic again. This time, he looks to throw over the blitzing linebacker and hit the slot out, but the safety is in position to defend it. 

Howell should then come back across the field where he has two crossing routes both breaking open. Instead, he immediately takes off running to his right, rolling into pressure and having to double back to his left. At that point, he can’t expect his line to be able to block for him because they no longer know where he is and thus where to protect. The trailing defenders eventually catch up to him and bring him down. 

These are correctable issues. The positives are that I think Howell saw both rushes coming and fully intended to throw over the top of them, which can often lead to the biggest gains. However, he got surprised by the safety rotating down from deep to cover the blitzer and then panicked on both plays when he had other options available. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see opposing defenses look to send similar blitzes in the opening weeks of the season. 

With that in mind, I thought I’d watch some of the Arizona Cardinals preseason All-22 ahead of their clash with the Commanders this weekend. I wanted to see if they were particularly blitz heavy, especially with this type of blitz that Howell took a few sacks on. What I found was that the Cardinals, under new head coach Jonathan Gannon, are quite similar schematically to what the Eagles were last year, which makes sense given Gannon was the Eagles defensive coordinator last year. 

The Eagles last year were primarily a quarters based defense with some man coverage mixed in too. Quarters coverage requires seven defenders to drop into coverage with four playing deep and three underneath. In preseason, the Cardinals showed they were going to live in quarters coverage regularly too. 

Here we see the Cardinals in their preseason opener against the Broncos. The Cardinals are in their nickel package with four rushers, two inside linebackers and five defensive backs. They drop back into their basic quarters coverage with the safeties and two outside corners playing deep while the linebackers and nickel corner play the underneath zones. 

Obviously if the Cardinals are dropping seven into coverage regularly to play quarters, then they can’t send a fifth rusher on a blitz. However, the Cardinals also showed a lot of man coverage concepts in preseason. 

This time we see the Cardinals defense against the Chiefs in their second preseason game. They try to disguise their intentions a little bit by keeping two safeties deep and split outside the hash marks, but actually they’re playing a variation of Cover 1 with each eligible receiver having a dedicated man with a safety in the deep middle of the field and a linebacker sitting in the middle of the field underneath. 

Playing man coverage has its risks because defenders have to cover one-on-one. With receivers like Terry McLaurin, Jahan Dotson and Curtis Samuel to contend with, it would be tough to prevent all three from getting open playing this style. Now the upside of man coverage is that it frees up a defender to join the rush, but the Cardinals consistently opted to keep that extra defender in coverage to help defend crossing routes, as you can see him doing here. 

This suggests to me that Gannon and the Cardinals aren’t necessarily likely to send a bunch of disguised blitzes at Howell and try to test if he’s learned from his mistakes in preseason. In fact, Gannon’s style with the Eagles was to focus more on playing sound coverage and trusting the front four to generate enough of a pass rush. However, in Philadelphia, Gannon did like to throw in the occasional Cover 0 call and that appears to have followed him to Arizona. 

These two plays were run back to back against the Broncos. The first play came on second and seven. The Cardinals line up in their base 3-4 front with the outside linebacker walked out towards the slot receiver. However, at the snap, the Cardinals send all available defenders to join the rush while the safeties rotate down to cover the slot and tight end in man coverage. This is a Cover 0 call where the defense plays pure man coverage and rushes every other available defender. Running it in this style means it takes a while to get home, but the surprise allows them to overrun the protection scheme and generate pressure, forcing the quarterback to throw it away. 

Having had success on the first play, the Cardinals call Cover 0 again on third down. This time they’re in a nickel package but the nickel ends up joining the rush. Once again it takes a little while to get there because the Cardinals are trying to disguise it, but it does eventually arrive and forces the quarterback to hurry a throw down the field which lands nowhere near a receiver. 

Cover 0 can be a great call to mix into a defensive scheme because it guarantees the defense can bring one more rusher than the offense is able to handle. However, the Cardinals preference for running it from depth while trying to disguise it does mean it leaves the offense extra time to attack it. Later in the same game, the Broncos took advantage of that.

This time, the Cardinals find themselves near the red zone in a fourth and five situation. Despite being spread out by the Broncos formation, they still opt to call Cover 0. The rush takes quite a while to make up ground from depth, giving the quarterback time to find a receiver. The quarterback is able to work to the slot receiver, who quickly cuts inside the safety rotating down to cover him. This is the downside of Cover 0. Once the safety is beat, which most slot receivers would expect to beat a safety, there is no help over the top to prevent that receiver from running all the way into the end zone. 

From watching the Cardinals in preseason and some of the Eagles scheme from last year, it seems unlikely that Gannon will look to call many blitzes. It’s even more unlikely that he’ll call the type of blitzes that Howell struggled with. However, Howell could potentially see a few Cover 0 calls mixed into the game which he will need to be ready to deal with. Fortunately, Howell saw a Cover 0 look from the Browns in preseason and I felt he handled it almost perfectly. 

On this third and short play, the Commanders look to run a variation of the mesh concept, which has been one of the top plays in third and short situations around the NFL for a number of years now. However, the Browns put six defenders on the line of scrimmage and have the remaining five defensive backs all line up across from the five eligible receivers. Howell recognizes it’s actually a Cover-0 blitz before he snaps the ball, so he uses it as an opportunity to attack. He adjusts the protection to slide to the left, picking up all the rushers apart from the edge rusher off the right side. That defender is unblocked and Howell knows he’s responsible for getting the ball out before that defender can get to him.

He does this because he knows that if the Browns are indeed sending a Cover 0 blitz, then the deep safety is the defender that will be responsible for the running back working out to the flat. As it’s only third and short, that’s a lot of ground for the safety to make up in order to save a first down and with the potential traffic created by the other receivers, there could be a big opportunity for additional yards after the catch down the sideline. 

Off the snap, Howell immediately starts to roll out to his right to try and avoid the unblocked defender and get his throw off to the running back in the flat. Unfortunately, the defender does a terrific job closing on Howell and getting his arms up to tip the pass, causing it to fall short of the running back. However, the overall point to note here is that Howell recognized the blitz, saw it as an opportunity to attack and took the necessary steps in order to do so. The mental process was fantastic and it’s just a shame that the defender tipped the pass, because if he hadn’t, that safety would have had a hard time stopping the running back in the flat.  

Now not all Cover 0 blitzes are equal and the Browns certainly made their rush more obvious than the Cardinals did in any of their Cover 0 calls. However, by making it obvious, the rushers didn’t have to make up as much ground and thus were able to generate pressure quicker, whereas the Cardinals were able to disguise their intentions more, but the pressure took longer to arrive. So that will be a different test for Howell, but it’s one that I expect he’ll pass because the mental process appears to be there. Still, until we see teams game planning specifically for him and dialing up looks he hasn’t seen before, we won’t know for sure how he’ll handle it. I fully expect the Commanders to beat the Cardinals on Sunday given the Cardinals appear to be tanking this season, but how Howell handles the Cover 0 blitzes will be more of a determining factor to how he will do going into tougher games than anything else.