Washington Commanders quarterback Sam Howell had a busy night on Thursday. The second-year quarterback, making his sixth career start, attempted a career-high 51 passes in the shocking 40-20 blowout loss to the Chicago Bears.
Howell completed 37 of 51 passes for 388 yards with two touchdowns and one interception. The natural inclination is when you’re blown out; the quarterback’s play is a significant problem.
Buy Commanders TicketsThat wasn’t the case on Thursday. Howell wasn’t perfect. His interception proved costly, and he missed Dyami Brown for a wide-open touchdown, which cost the Commanders four points.
But Howell kept battling. He led the Commanders to a touchdown and two-point conversion to open the second half, and Washington was driving for another score when tight end Logan Thomas fumbled.
The Commanders had completely abandoned the running game at this point. Check out this statistic from Nathan Jahnke of Pro Football Focus.
The Washington Commanders dropped back to pass 55 straight times without a designed run tonight, from 8:49 in the 2nd quarter until the end of the game. That is the most for a team in game that PFF has data for (back to 2006)
— Nathan Jahnke (@PFF_NateJahnke) October 6, 2023
That’s pretty alarming, but I’ll defend offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy here.
The Commanders finished the game with 29 rushing yards on 10 attempts. Howell had 19 of those yards while scrambling away from pressure. Brian Robinson Jr. had six carries for 10 yards. Robinson ran well through the first four games, but Washington could get nothing on the ground early.
And while the Commanders did have momentum in the third quarter, they never got closer than 10 points. Howell was having success moving the football, and the later the game got, short runs wouldn’t help Washington.
Under other circumstances, this would be a significant problem. On Thursday, Bieniemy was trying to throw Washington back in the game, and that was close to happening at one point.
