Sam Howell struggles against the Rams
Breaking down quarterback Sam Howell's performance in the loss to the Rams
Coming out of the bye week with not much left to play for this season, the Commanders would have been hoping for young quarterback Sam Howell to put together a strong performance against the Rams to give the team a lift for the rest of the season. However, Howell had one of his worst performances of the season. He completed just 11 of 26 passing attempts for 102 yards, one touchdown and one interception.
The statline on its own is bad, but for some context, it was season lows on completed passes (11), completion percentage (42%), yards (102) and average yards per pass attempt (3.9). While he had the four interception performance against the Bills and three interceptions against the Giants, I think this game was probably his worst of his NFL career to date. He never looked comfortable and struggled to get into rhythm. One of Howell’s strengths this year has been generally getting to the correct receiver, just sometimes not quite fast enough. In this game, he frequently missed open targets.
On the Commanders second drive of the game, they came up against a fourth and short situation near midfield. The team opted to go for it, trusting Howell and the offense to make a play. Eric Bieniemy calls a variation of a mesh concept. This is a man-beating concept with two shallow crossing routes from either side of the formation designed to create traffic for trailing defenders. On top of that, a third receiver sits over the middle of the field on a hook route as an option against zone. The Commanders also add a wheel route from the running back out of the backfield which is a common part of mesh concepts around the NFL.
Just before the ball is snapped, Howell signals for the running back to go in motion behind him out to the flat to start his wheel route. The back begins the motion and Howell snaps the ball. As that happens, the linebacker lined up on the right side of the offensive line suddenly bails out of what looked like a potential blitz and is immediately panicked trying to chase the running back who has a huge head start on his wheel route. This is something Howell should recognize almost immediately at the snap and be alerted that the wheel route is on. The linebacker ends up running into Curtis Samuel as Samuel looks to run the middle hook route, which leaves the back in wide open field as he turns down the sideline. Unfortunately, Howell somehow never notices.
Instead, he stares over the middle of the field at what becomes a very muddied area with the linebacker running into Samuel on top of the other routes crossing against each other. Howell starts to panic in the pocket and steps up looking to escape, but at the last second spots McLaurin’s route bending up the other sideline and finds him with a nice ball to convert, but he made it far more difficult than he had to and the original design of the play would have likely led to a much more explosive play, possibly even a touchdown.
On top of missing open receivers, Howell’s execution of throws was poor throughout the game.
On this play, the Rams look to send an overloading blitz to the right side of the Commanders offensive line. To do this, they end up dropping the edge rusher on the left side of the line out into coverage. The slot defender also shifts inside just before the snap and is likely meant to be a middle hole player, but with responsibility on the running back too. The Rams are probably hoping the running back steps up to help the blitz, leaving the slot defender free to roam in the middle of the field, but the Commanders swing the running back out to the flat, which leaves the slot defender having to make up a ton of ground.
Now, credit to Sam Howell for the mental process on this play. He appears to understand what’s going on and makes a check before the snap with a signal pointing towards his helmet. He then takes the snap and sets up to throw to Gibson, which is the correct route to throw given how much ground the slot defender has to make up to reach him. Ideally, I’d love to see Howell shorten up his drop and simply catch the snap, take a rock step and immediately get rid of the ball to get the ball in Gibson’s hands and get him running as soon as possible, but I don’t hate him taking his steps to get properly set. The issue here is that when he comes to actually make the throw, he fires a fastball high and behind Gibson, forcing him to completely adjust his body to make a tough catch.
Gibson did just about manage to hold onto the ball and make the catch, but he was limited to just a six-yard gain when he could have had so much more with a better throw. That defender had so much ground to make up and Gibson is not easy to tackle one-on-one in the open field.
There were far too many of those failed execution plays in this game from Howell and many of them could have resulted in more interceptions.
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