All Those Sam Howell Sacks

We need to talk about Sam Howell. But before we do, we need to talk about David Carr.

Since 2002, the record for most times sacked in a season has belonged to Carr and the Houston Texans. Behind a legendarily bad expansion line, with a top-pick pedigree and no one worth starting behind him, Carr absorbed 76 sacks that season, breaking Randall Cunningham’s mark of 72. While that was his high-water point, Carr developed into one of the most sacked quarterbacks in NFL history. He is one of seven qualified players who was sacked on more than 10% of his career dropbacks, and the only one whose career started in the 21st century. The premier sack victim of our generation, Carr’s 2002 record seemed like a perfect confluence of events, and one that would never be challenged.

Entering Week 7, Sam Howell was on pace to absorb 96 sacks. Howell was then gifted a matchup against the New York Giants, who have the second-lowest adjusted sack rate in the league. Howell was promptly sacked six more times, bringing his season total up to 40 and putting him on pace for 97 for the year. His sack rate now sits at 13.5%, one of the 20 worst seasons of all time. Howell is hitting the turf at rates we haven’t seen in decades, and he’s looking to not just put his name in the record books but rewrite them entirely. 

And yet, Washington is 3-4 and in the thick of the playoff race in the NFC – this, despite roughly one in seven pass plays ending up with Howell’s linemen sheepishly picking him up off the turf.

So what’s going on? Is Washington’s offensive line uniquely bad, or is Howell bringing something special to the table? Can Washington keep winning while Howell keeps getting battered and bruised? And is Carr’s record really in danger? Let’s take a closer look.

They say that sacks are a quarterback stat, but surely an offensive line has to be fairly Swiss-cheeseish if someone’s already taken 40 sacks this season, yes? Well, while it’s fair to say that Washington’s offensive line isn’t the most imposing we’ve ever seen, they don’t really project as a group that would be record-settingly awful.

Washington sits 14th in ESPN’s Pass Block Win Rate at 57%, with left tackle Charles Leno ranking 13th among tackles in success rate. The interior of the line is a little more questionable, but nothing that stands out as particularly newsworthy. They’re allowing pressure on 34.7% of drop backs, which is ninth-most in the league, but that’s just run-of-the-mill bad, not “lap the field” bad. Andrew Wylie has the fourth-most blown pass blocks in the league among right tackles and Saahdiq Charles is fourth among left guards, but again, these are the splits you’d expect of a below-average line rather than a terrible one.

Adjusted sack rate is not so kind. As you might expect, Washington ranks 32nd with a 14.6% adjusted sack rate, nearly two full percentage points ahead of the 31st-ranked Giants. If that holds up, it will be the second-worst adjusted sack rate in our database, going back to 1996, with Carr’s expansion Texans being the only team above them.

Side note: Yes, 2023 would have four of the 12 highest adjusted sack rates of all time if the season ended today. Part of that is small sample size; it’s easier to put up historically high numbers in seven weeks than 17, and there’s a decent chance the Titans and Bears slip out of the very top by the time the year is over. But sacks are up across the league this year, too. Quarterbacks have been sacked on 7.1% of dropbacks, the highest rate through Week 7 since 2000. There isn’t a singular reason for that. Some of it might be due to less preseason and training camp contact work for offensive lines. Some of it might be due to defenses adjusting for the ever-increasing pass rates in the NFL. And some if it may come from a downturn in quarterback quality after something of a golden age, which brings us neatly back to Howell.

How can Washington rank second-worst all-time in adjusted sack rate, but middle of the pack in Pass Block Win Rate? Because they’re measuring two different things, and that gets to the heart of the problem.

Adjusted sack rate measures sacks (and intentional groundings) per pass play, adjusted for situation and opponent. It adjusts the rate down in common sack situations like third-and-long, but every sack is eventually counted. Pass Block Win Rate, on the other hand, looks for linemen holding their blocks for 2.5 seconds – if they can last that long, it’s a success, even if a pass rusher gets around them later.

Most sacks come after 2.5 seconds, and Howell’s sacks are no exception. Howell’s time to throw this season is a below-average 2.8 seconds; he doesn’t hold the ball as long as, say, a Justin Fields (3.0 seconds) but he is willing and able to stand in the pocket, waiting for plays to develop. His average time before taking a sack is 3.5 seconds – again, not the worst, but significantly above average. So even when his linemen do hold a block long enough for it to qualify as a success for ESPN, Howell often holds the ball for long enough for someone to eventually get to him anyway.

But other quarterbacks hold the ball all day and don’t get sacked – Josh Allen’s time to throw is 3.0 seconds; Patrick Mahomes is 2.9. Those quarterbacks adjust when pressure happens and either make some magic happen or throw the ball away. Howell … crumples.

For Howell, pressures become sacks 39.5% of the time. That is insanely high. The league average is 23% and no other quarterback is above 35%. Howell doesn’t really throw the ball away or scramble out of pressure; he just kind of absorbs hit after hit. And a lot if it is his fault – Pro Football Focus has charted 13 of his 40 sacks as being due to pressure Howell himself allowed, rather than his offensive line; no other quarterback in the league is above seven.

When not getting sacked, Howell has still been a bad quarterback this season, but to a much lesser extent. Howell is 31st in passing DVOA at -27.6%. If you remove all sacks from all players, he rises to 26th and 6.7%, jumping ahead of players such as Jimmy Garoppolo, Mac Jones and Joe Burrow. That 34.3% jump is the third highest among qualified quarterbacks, behind fellow sack artists Justin Fields and Daniel Jones. Howell’s issues wouldn’t be fixed if he wasn’t getting hit so much, but some of the 614 DYAR he’s lost from sacks would be nice to have back. 

Howell may be way ahead of record pace at the moment, but he’s not the first quarterback to take 40 sacks through seven games.

Yes, David Carr was on pace for 98 sacks as a rookie through his first seven games. He took at least six sacks in five of those contests, but only had one six-sack game after Week 7, averaging “just” 3.7 sacks the rest of the way. Progress! Or, at least, it would look like progress had he not been right back in the same boat three years later. Say what you will about the expansion Houston line and the long-term effect that level of pressure had on Carr’s development, but other quarterbacks have played behind poor lines in the past; no one could take a sack quite like Carr could.

What strikes me most about this list is that most of these players finished the season. You would expect highly sacked quarterbacks to be more likely to get hurt and miss time, but nine of the 12 non-Howell names on that list started every game that season. Daunte Culpepper tore his ACL, PCL and MCL in his seventh game in 2005, ending his season. Warren Moon was benched for two weeks in 1985; Archie Manning lost the starting job for four in 1971. That’s it, and that’s an impressive stretch of longevity. 

One of the running comments about Howell’s run at Carr’s record is how he’s a shoo-in, unless he’s benched or injured. That’s simply not been the case historically. McDonald and Cunningham were on pace for more than 76 sacks, too, but petered out before the season ended. We’re also missing some of the top sacked seasons of all time on this list. Cunningham has two of the 10 most-sacked seasons of all time, and neither is 1988; Jon Kitna’s 63-sack season was 2006, not 2007, and 60-sack seasons by Ken O’Brien, Deshaun Watson and Neil Lomax don’t show up at all. One or two huge sack games can put you on a list like this, temporarily. Variance!

Warren Moon had a record 12 sacks against Dallas in 1985; that one game is why he ends up on the list of most sacks through seven weeks. McDonald an 11-sack day against Kansas City in 1984; Kitna had a 10-sack day against Philadelphia in 2007 and so on and so forth. One bad day finds you a place in infamy

That’s not what’s going on with Howell, though. To reach 76 sacks, you need to average more than four sacks per game. Howell has been sacked at least five times in six of the first seven games of the year, an NFL record. The only player to even have five such games through seven? David Carr in both 2002 and 2005. Howell isn’t resting on one particular bad day inflating his stats; he’s consistently racking up sacks week-in and week-out. He’s only two games off the single-season record for five-sack days; it’s that level of consistency that really gives him a shot at the record. Howell may not quite be where Carr was in 2002, but he’s proving that he can record solid numbers in any situation. He can absorb nine sacks against the fourth-best team in adjusted sack rate in Buffalo; he can take six sacks against the second-worst team in New York. Howell is a week-in, week-out threat to put up huge numbers, in a way we really haven’t seen since Carr’s heyday. He’d be a fitting successor to Carr’s record, should he keep this up over a full season.

It seems nearly impossible for Howell to not rack up the 3.6 sacks per game he’d need from here on out to break the record if he starts all 17 games. Injury, of course, could scupper that, but a bigger risk is Ron Rivera deciding enough is enough and sending Howell to the bench. Washington has a quality backup quarterback in Jacoby Brissett; if Washington is hovering in the playoff race but Howell isn’t getting the job done, we could see a quarterback change. For his part, Rivera has said that he’s “committed” to Howell, but that he “can’t predict the future”, which is about the most tepid statement of support you could possibly give.

If I had to put money on it, I’d bet that Howell comes up short, because Rivera’s seat is very hot under new owner Josh Harris. He likely needs to hit at least .500 to survive, and that might cause him to have a quick hook should Washington fall too far behind in the playoff race. There’s only so long Howell can walk the tightrope of sacks by the handful and close games. It is more likely either Howell will do a better job avoiding pressure, or the bottom will fall out and he’ll be replaced. For now, however, the chase is on.