What key statistic could define Washington Commanders quarterback Sam Howell's pivotal 2023 campaign as the team's No. 1 option?
This is a story about one relatively obscure way to judge Washington Commanders' presumed starting quarterback Sam Howell this season. But I’m beginning with two lists.
Consider the following two groups of quarterbacks:
LIST 1: Aaron Rodgers, Jacoby Brissett, Patrick Mahomes, Tyrod Taylor, Tom Brady, Colin Kaepernick, Justin Herbert, Russell Wilson, Daniel Jones, and Dak Prescott.
LIST 2: Payton Manning, Dan Marino, Doug Williams, Mark Rypien, Drew Brees, Patrick Mahomes, Steve Bono, Tom Brady, Derek Anderson, and John Brodie.
Which list is better?
I suppose you could quibble, but I’m going with the second list. It has more can’t-miss Pro Football Hall of Famers. Amongst its non-elite quarterbacks, it has a couple of Super Bowls (Williams and Rypien) and an NFL MVP (Brodie).
Career backups Anderson and Bono are canceled out by Brissett and Taylor. It doesn’t have Rodgers, but LIST 1 doesn’t have Manning or Brees. It’s close, but the edge goes to LIST 2.
LIST 1 has the top ten career leaders in interception percentage. That basically means it has the quarterbacks who have been least likely to throw picks. That’s undeniably important. Everybody agrees on that.
LIST2 has the top ten career leaders in sack percentage. That means these are the quarterbacks least likely to be sacked. I’m going to argue that for a young quarterback like Howell, that is actually a more important gauge of how good he might become. I’ve never heard anyone make that argument before.
Your first reaction might be to discount sack percentage because it is often seen as a function of the offensive line. There’s some truth to that. But every single quarterback statistic is dependent on factors beyond their play.
Total yards, the traditional measure of a quarterback, is dependent on the scheme (how often does the team throw?) and situation (bad teams with average quarterbacks may rack up yards because they are often playing from behind against softer “prevent” defenses).
A quarterback's completion percentage is also scheme-dependent. Those operating in quick rhythm offenses may complete more short passes. I prefer yards-per-attempt as a balance to this, but even there, it can be highly influenced by personnel.
If I’m throwing swing passes to Christian McCaffrey and you’re throwing them to Kenyon Drake, I’m going to have a higher yards-per-attempt even though we may be equal quarterbacks.
Touchdown-to-interception ratio is very popular these days, but even that can be skewed by scheme and personnel. Jalen Hurts had an excellent ratio in 2022, but he still finished behind Jared Goff and Jimmy Garappolo because he ran for 13 touchdowns.
And ultimately, no single stat can ever capture how good or bad a quarterback is if it doesn’t take the situation into account. An interception on a Hail Mary at the end of the first half is negligible. An interception in the fourth quarter of a close game is devastating. Yet most statistical analyses treat them the same.
Yards accumulated in the fourth quarter of a blowout may inflate how a quarterback looks on paper. In the stats game, we call this the KCIF –Kirk Cousins Inflation Factor. Something the Commanders know all about before he left for the Minnesota Vikings.
What should Commanders expect from Sam Howell in 2023?
So what should we look for from Washington Commanders quarterback Sam Howell in 2023? I want two things.
I want him to generate touchdowns – be it through the air, or setting up short Brian Robinson Jr. runs. And I want a very low sack percentage. 6.0 or below.
That would put him in the top half of the league in a normal year. As a point of reference, Taylor Heinicke was a mediocre 6.8 last year and Carson Wentz was a very poor 8.6.
The really good quarterbacks with high sack percentages tend to be the best runners – players like Hurts and Lamar Jackson. They tend to hold the ball longer while scrambling around and do get sacked more as a result. They also make more chunk plays downfield.
Not getting sacked obviously aids an offense, but it also says something about how well the quarterback dissects the entire defense – both pass rush and coverage. Quarterbacks who don’t get brought down tend to see the game at a slower speed. That may be an innate talent. It may be the function of superb preparation. Either way, it is a very encouraging sign for a young player.
There is a caveat here, and this is why I said that Howell also has to produce touchdowns. A quarterback can avoid sacks by growing panicky and flinging the ball too early to avoid the sack. Quarterbacks can never be afraid of either throwing an interception or taking a sack.
Contrary to the way many people see the position, I would rather he risk the interception than take the sack. Because when he risks a takeaway, good things can happen, especially in the era of defensive pass interference. There cannot be DPI if you do not throw the ball.
Brett Favre is a classic example of this. He threw a ton of picks but had more touchdowns. One of the reasons he was able to throw so many scores is that he did not take a lot of sacks. His career sack percentage is 4.9, which puts him in the top 20 all-time.
Does history favor Commanders QB Sam Howell?
Let’s take a brief tour through recent NFL history. We’ll look at a few Washington Commanders' examples and a few league-wide.
The red lights began flashing for Dwayne Haskins when he posted an abysmal 12.5 sack percentage in his rookie season. He did improve to 7.7 by his second year, but that is still well below average.
Taylor Heinicke, in his full season as a starter (2021) was somewhat better at 7.1. There are a couple of exceptions, but leaguewide, that suggests a fairly mediocre quarterback – which is pretty much what he is.
If you argue that this isn’t a fair comparison because they played with different teammates, we can solve that by going back a little further in the Commanders' history. In 1994, rookie Heath Shuler had a very good 4.3 sack percentage. But his rookie counterpart Gus Frerotte was much better at 2.9.
The following season, Frerotte did go up to a still-solid 5.5 while Shuler ballooned to 9.4 By the end of two seasons, it was clear who was the better player.
Go back to 1987, during the glory days. The original starter Jay Schroeder posted a 6.7 sack percentage. That’s pretty good, but it is diminished a bit by the fact that Washington had an excellent offensive line.
How do we know that? Because the man who eventually replaced Schroeder – Doug Williams – had an elite 4.7 playing with that same line. Guess which signal-caller Joe Gibbs wanted come playoff time? The one who didn’t take as many sacks.
Still not sold? This century, the only quarterback Washington has produced who's had long-term success is Kirk Cousins. In his first full year as a starter, the Michigan State product had a 4.6 sack percentage. As you know by now, that is excellent.
Do not confuse the sack percentage number with a good or bad individual season. Robert Griffin III had a brilliant rookie season with a mediocre 7.1 sack percentage. The following year, when the first-rounder and Cousins were both in their second seasons – and playing in the same scheme behind the same offensive line – he regressed to a 7.7 while his teammate posted an outstanding 3.1.
As with Frerotte and Shuler, the less-hyped player grew into a legit NFL quarterback while the top-three draft pick quickly disappeared from the league.
Benchmarks for Commanders QB Sam Howell in 2023
I’ll close with my two favorite examples of sack percentage as an indicator of future success. The first is Don Majikowski – Green Bay’s “Majik Man” in 1989.
He was spectacular, leading his team to a 10-6 record and making the Pro Bowl. But it was done with smoke and mirrors. Majikowski scrambled around a lot and flung the ball downfield, and in 1989, he hit on enough of those plays to make Packers fans begin thinking they had the real Doug Flutie.
But sack percentage told a different story. In 1989, Majikowski had a sack percentage of 7.3. That’s not very good. And almost as if he was seduced by his magical season, that number skyrockets over the next three seasons to over 10.
You see – Majikowski wasn’t very good – and sack percentage knew that way before fans did.
And finally, consider these two highly-touted quarterbacks. The top pick in their respective drafts, some 13 years apart. As you might expect, both went to bad teams, and both struggled mightily in their rookie seasons.
The first had an 0-11 record as a starter, completing just 52.9 percent of his passes. His interception percentage was 6.1, which is not good. His yards-per-attempt was 6.0, which is also not good. You never want to see a quarterback’s interception percentage be higher than his yards-per-attempt. The signal-caller had a rating of 55.7 in his rookie season.
The second quarterback was similar. A 4-12 record as a starter. 52.5 completion percentage. Yards-per-attempt was slightly lower at 5.8, but he had a much better interception ratio at 3.8. Because the rating number values that interception percentage, the second signal-caller had a better rating – 62.8.
Based on those numbers, you might say the second quarterback was slightly better. But there was another number where there was a dramatic difference. That was the sack percentage.
The first quarterback’s sack percentage was 6.1. That’s pretty good under normal circumstances. For a rookie on a bad team, it’s exceptional. It suggests he was processing the game at a high level despite his lack of experience.
The second had a sack percentage of 14.6 – one of the most abysmal numbers in the history of the league.
No. 1 comes in the form of Troy Aikman, who went on to win three Super Bowls and reached the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The second is David Carr, who never played in a playoff game, had a career completion percentage under 60, and had a negative career touchdown-to-interception ratio.
You would be correct to point out that the Dallas Cowboys put a much better team around Aikman than the Houston Texans ever put around Carr. But I challenge you to find me someone who thinks Carr would have been as good as Aikman if only he had a better-supporting cast.
Aikman was one of the main reasons Dallas was as good as they were during the 1990s. Carr may have been dealt a bad hand in his career, but he certainly never showed the ability to transcend it.
If you were watching Aikman in 1989, you might not have noticed the sack percentage, but in hindsight, you should have. It was an early marker of a quality NFL signal caller. Regardless of how the Washington Commanders perform in 2023, I want to see similar signs from Sam Howell.