Sometimes, the best answers or the right answers are the direct and blunt ones – and after the Junkies asked Jonathan Allen Monday if he was surprised by Taylor Heinicke’s performance in relief of Desmond Ridder Sunday (spoiler: he wasn’t), they asked him what his take is on Sam Howell through eight weeks.
And it’s not just recency bias after seeing Howell put up 397 and four tuddies against Philly: Allen truly believes Sam is the guy.
“Yeah, the thing that's frustrating is we've all said that, like, ‘man, once we get our quarterback, we're gonna be a really dangerous team.’ And I genuinely believe that we have our quarterback of the future,” Allen said. “I truly believe that. I think he's shown enough to be worthy to have the justification of moving forward and saying he's our guy.”
And it’s the rest of the team letting Howell down most of the time, not the other way around.
“We have the pieces around him, but we're just not coming together, and that's what's frustrating because I truly believe Sam's our franchise quarterback,” Allen said. “I believe he'll be our quarterback for the next five to 10 years, so it’s good to see him do it. I'm not surprised, I wouldn't expect anything less.”