Sam Howell sat in front of his locker still dressed in his full Washington Commanders uniform, pads and all, about a half-hour after his team lost 38-31 to the Philadelphia Eagles at a FedEx Field filled with Eagles fans — Lincoln Financial Field south.
Many other players were dressed and gone, but Howell sat there, looking off into space. His coach, Ron Rivera, walked by and tapped Howell on the leg with his folded-up stat sheet.
He should have made his young quarterback a paper crown with those sheets of paper and placed it on his head, because Howell was making history Sunday and giving his team many of those precious “opportunities” Rivera often speaks of missing after a loss that puts the Commanders at 3-5 for the season.
Howell passed 200 completions in his young career, the fastest any quarterback in franchise history got to that milestone and only the 10th quarterback to have done so in nine games in NFL history.
He completed 24 passes in the first half, the second-highest mark this season, bested only by San Diego’s Justin Herbert’s 26 completions in the first half two weeks ago.
Howell finished the game with four touchdown passes, which put him at four games for the season with at least two touchdown passes, the most for a Washington quarterback since Gus Frerotte in 1995. That’s 28 years ago.
The man who had been a human pinata to date, on pace to set an NFL record with 40 sacks in seven games, was brought down just once Sunday by an Eagles defense that came into the game ranked fifth in sacks.
This should have been a day of Howell celebration, a crowning. Instead, it was another week of frustration over Washington coaching decisions and play-calling — even if the play-calling by offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy was far better than it had been the week before in a 14-7 loss to the lowly New York Giants.
Bieniemy created a game plan that allowed Howell to get rid of the ball quickly in a shorter, less ambitious, passing game, and the 23-year-old quarterback made the most of it, completing 39 passes for 397 yards, four touchdowns and one costly interception that led to an Eagles touchdown.
But it was also maddening on several levels. One, with this kind of game plan, it’s likely the Commanders would not have lost to the Giants and two weeks before to the Chicago Bears. Both teams bested their season total of sacks in those respective games because of Bieniemy’s insistence on dropping Howell back to pass behind a porous offensive line, with a young quarterback who tends to hold onto the ball too long.
This time, the Bieniemy playbook called for short, quick strikes — but 52 of them. Howell threw the ball 52 times! The Commanders, with a bull of a running back in Brian Robinson Jr. and a promising rookie in Chris Rodriguez, ran the ball just 16 times. Robinson had 5.9 yards per carry on 10 carries and, inexplicably, Rodriguez didn’t play at all. The week before against the Giants, Rodriguez had seven carries for 31 yards, a 4.4 yard-per-carry average.
No paper crown for Bieniemy. All he did Sunday was prove how bad he has been at his job for much of this season.
Rivera had his typical clueless moment in the game when he failed to challenge a completion to Eagles receiver DeVonta Smith that appeared to be incomplete. When asked why he didn’t challenge the call, Rivera responded, “Because I didn’t see it on the screen.” It really doesn’t matter what the rest of his explanation was.
When it came time to sing Howell’s praises, Rivera was muted. “There’s some really good things in the first half — a little bit of a slow start in the third quarter, but he came out of it and was able to push the ball downfield, especially when we got into the hurry-up situations,” he said. “He (Howell) really handled those things. This is all growth and development.”
I think everyone would rather that growth and development for Howell take place with a new coaching staff and front office personnel.
Rivera said he was “only going to talk about one game at a time. That’s the truth of the matter.” But I believe the truth of the matter is that Commanders fans would just as soon blow through the rest of this season as quickly as possible so that new owner Josh Harris can put his imprint on the direction of this franchise on the field. He started last week with the hiring of Eugene Shen as senior vice president of football strategy.
I mean, are you really looking forward to the Giants, Dallas Cowboys, Miami Dolphins and San Francisco 49ers coming to FedEx Field the rest of the year and watching more of this inconsistent, sometimes incoherent, football strategy?
⦁ You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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