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One of the biggest talking points around this Washington Commanders team has been the ability to pass protect for young quarterback Sam Howell. Howell was sacked 40 times in the first seven games of the season, an average of nearly six sacks a game. It was particularly bad in that seventh game when the Giants sent blitz after blitz and Howell was sacked six times. 

That Giants game prompted some changes from the Commanders. Left guard Saahdiq Charles suffered an injury in that game and Chris Paul has replaced him since then. At center, free agent acquisition Nick Gates was benched in favor of veteran back up Tyler Larsen. Since those changes, the Commanders have played the Eagles and the Patriots and Howell has been sacked four times total across those two games, a significant drop in sack rate. 

So judging from that, it’d be safe to assume that the changes to the offensive line have made a huge difference, right? Not necessarily. To explain why, let’s first look at a sack from the Giants game to explain some of the issues the Commanders were having. 

This is the third sack from that Giants game back in week seven. The Giants are clearly showing the intent to blitz with just about every defender lined up on the line of scrimmage and just a single safety back deep in the middle of the field. When you’re expecting a team to blitz, you need to be able to identify clues from the defense to figure out who could be blitzing. 

The Giants give away a pretty big clue here. Safety Jason Pinnock is aligned down on the line of scrimmage off the right side of the offensive line. There’s no obvious reason for him to be there as the one receiver to that side already has a cornerback aligned in press coverage over him. The running back and tight end, the two positions a safety would typically be responsible for in man coverage, are both aligned to the other side of the formation, so he’s clearly not responsible for them. This means the defense is going to bail out of the blitz and play zone, something they rarely did in this game, or that safety is likely to blitz. 

The Commanders get a further clue when they motion Jahan Dotson across the formation and the corner in coverage follows him, indicating that it is indeed man coverage. That should alert both the center and the quarterback that the safety is blitzing off that right side and they need to be able to account for it. However, neither Howell or center Nick Gates makes an adjustment. 

From the end zone angle of that clip, we can see running back Antonio Gibson working across to the right side, likely to try and block that safety. However, the Giants had been using an “add on” technique all game. This means that when someone stays in to block instead of running a route, the defender assigned with covering that player adds on to the rush. So as Gibson looks to slide across and pick up the safety off the edge, the linebacker covering Gibson adds on to the rush. Gibson spots this and makes the correct decision to adjust his path and pick up the linebacker as he’s the more immediate threat. 

As you can see from the clip, this leaves Washington overloaded. They have enough bodies staying in to protect to account for each defender that rushes, but because they failed to pick up on the clue from the Giants safety of where the blitz was coming from, they failed to adjust the protection and slide it into the blitz. That leaves four rushers working against three blockers on the right side of the line. The safety ends up rushing free off the edge and Howell can’t avoid him, resulting in a sack. 

That play showed a problem that was emerging for Washington, that blitzes weren’t being identified and the protection wasn’t being adjusted to pick them up. Offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy was calling plays that left enough bodies in to pick up the blitzes, but it’s up to the center and quarterback to ensure those bodies are aimed at the right people once everyone is in position at the line of scrimmage. Clearly Howell is still developing in this area and they felt Gates wasn’t helping enough, so they made the switch to Larsen. And that switch has helped with this specific problem. 

On this play, the Patriots have five defenders on the line of scrimmage, with a linebacker joining the two interior defensive tackles and the two edge rushers. The Patriots bring a simulated pressure, with the linebacker joining the rush to give the effect of a blitz, but the edge rusher on the far side drops out into coverage to replace him. Washington has struggled to pick up these simulated pressures and have often been left overloaded because of it. But you can see here that Larsen identifies it earlier and points to the left multiple times, letting the line and the quarterback know he’s sliding the protection that way. 

By sliding the protection, the line is able to handle not only the rush but the stunt as well. Larsen passes off the nose tackle to Chris Paul at left guard and then slides back inside to pick up the linebacker looping that way. Right guard Sam Cosmi passes off his defensive tackle to right tackle Andrew Wylie and then slides back inside to help Larsen with the linebacker. Left tackle Charles Leno does still surrender a bit of pressure off the edge, but the immediate threats were picked up and Howell was given enough time to deliver his throw. 

Having that experience at center that is able to identify blitzes and adjust the protection to ensure the line isn’t overloaded is a big help to a young quarterback, but Larsen hasn’t been the only reason the sacks have been cut down. Howell himself has shown a great deal of growth and development in this regard over the past few weeks too. 

On this play, the Patriots attempt to attack Howell with a bit of a disguised Cover 0 blitz. There are clues there, but they aren’t necessarily as obvious as we saw against the Giants. That being said, Howell is able to identify those clues pre-snap. The first is that the Patriots vacate the deep part of the field, you can see there’s no safety back deep and every defender is within about seven yards of the line of scrimmage. Another clue is the position of the safeties that the Patriots have on the field. They have three safeties on the field, with one across from tight end Logan Thomas and then two in a similar position over Jamison Crowder in the slot. 

With two safeties in a similar position in the slot, it’s likely that only one of them is covering Crowder while the other could still drop into coverage, but is also a blitz threat. With the Patriots tendency to use Cover 0 blitzes, Howell assumes that the safety is a blitzing threat, so makes an adjustment. However, rather than adjusting the protection, he makes an adjustment to the route combination. You can see as Howell raises his hand to make the adjustment, Crowder actually starts to move like he was expecting to be sent in motion. He then realizes that Howell is signalling for something different and holds his position. 

Howell changes the play to a quick screen to Crowder in the flat. If the Patriots are indeed running Cover 0, then this screen should hit before any blitz can get home and they have a chance to pick up a big gain if the screen isn’t properly covered. Howell’s pre-snap work proved to be exactly right as the Patriots do end up running Cover 0. Howell catches the snap and instantly sets up to throw the screen to Crowder. The Patriots react quickly and cover it well, but Crowder is still able to pick up five yards on the play. 

The ability to identify blitzes and then having the confidence to either adjust the protection or change the play is huge for a young quarterback, especially one that has been sacked as often as Howell. Quarterback play can do a lot to overcome protection issues with details just like this. It’s not necessarily something Howell was doing earlier in the season, certainly not consistently. But in this game, he did it multiple times. In fact, his pre-snap identification of a Cover 0 blitz is what led to the Jahan Dotson touchdown pass. 

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