Sam Howell is getting all the praise lately, after three straight 300-yard passing games (which is, as we all know, a rare feat for a Washington QB). And on Tuesday, he finally got the seal of approval from one of his toughest critics around here: Barstool Nate.
"I have anointed Sam as the guy, and I don't know if it's because we have not seen a quarterback have any sort of competence in so long or if it's because he's actually awesome, which he is," Nate said during his weekly call to BMitch & Finlay. "You cannot lead the league in passing yards more than halfway through the season without having a lot of talent; it doesn't matter what you call them, he completes passes and makes things happen with his legs, and has nearly 3,000 yards. That makes you, in my mind, worthy of being called the guy."
Of course, Nate started his call being negative, calling Camaron Cheeseman "the worst long snapper in NFL history who is kept around due to Ron Rivera's ego," but hey, we're trying to accentuate the positive here.
And yeah, Nate is on the upswing with Howell, giving Sam a 100 on the BMitch & Finlay Sam Howell Confidence Scale of 0 to 100 – although he gets where Brian Mitchell's mind is at.
"Look at a guy like Josh Allen – it was him, Mahomes, and Burrow touted as the next generation, and he's taken a step back, so I get where BMitch is – it's really hard to say somebody is 'the guy,'" Nate said. "But I side with you that it's not all about stats. What it is about for am is his improvement and seeing him get better week after week. He's taking fewer sacks, using his legs more outside the pocket, and spreading the ball around. He uses the entire field and simply makes plays happen, and we're watching a guy develop in front of our eyes. I think that's what's important. The stats are great as well, but he's passing the eye test, too, and it's both of those together."
The record is what it is, but Nate attributes a lot of that to the defense's failings, as Howell has kept his team in three of the six losses and led comebacks in two of the four wins.
"He's not going out there and throwing terrible interceptions late to take the game away – he's doing everything possible to win these games," Nate said. "As a QB you get a lot of the praise and the blame, but Sam Howell is in a unique situation where we're watching him put a team on his back and do everything he can to get this team to win. I don't think there's any reason to blame Sam Howell for some of these losses."
BMitch had to chime in and remind that he was one who never crowned Allen in the same category as Burrow and Mahomes, but he also wants to see more than one year – aka no "sophomore slump" – before he anoints Sam the guy 100 percent.
"Is he in line to start next year? Yes," Brian said. "Is he a proven thing? Hell to the no."
"Being an NFL quarterback is the hardest job in the world and only getting harder," Nate agreed. "Like, we can have that 'is he the guy?' discussion about 95 percent of NFL quarterbacks because it's an impossible job to be consistently good at, so to have a quarterback like Sam Howell, who is so young and so inexperienced, doing what he's doing right now, I think he has surpassed so every single possible expectation that any person could have."
