Will it be Brissett or Howell Sunday vs. the Niners? Ron Rivera said he hasn't made up his mind and won't talk about it, but even well before that, we heard BMitch & Finlay say on The Team 980 that Howell had to be benched on Sunday when he was…and Chris Russell could only agree as he opened his show.
Sure, there is reason to believe that there's good reason to start Sam Howell Sunday.
"It would make sense from a common sense standpoint if you don't further derail Sam Howell's confidence and you throw him back out there to a pack of wolves on Sunday, against a team on a shorter week flying cross-country, to see if he can capture the magic again and maybe do a little bit of what the Ravens were able to do," Russell said. "Maybe they get Brian Robinson back, you know, maybe they run the ball better more, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe all of these things."
Then again…
"There's the thought that's he's been so bad the last two weeks that it's really hard to tell the locker room to go full speed and play as hard as they can and sacrifice and still keep throwing Howell out there," Rooster said. "He's clearly lost it, and maybe he has the yips. He might be so deer in the headlights at this point that he is incapable of playing. I don't know the answer to that, all I know is he hasn't been good since before Thanksgiving."
Chris laid out how things have gone from bad to worse to nuclear in the last month, and it's not all not his fault, but the start of Sunday's game was "an epic poop show" and Sam just had no answer.
And that's why he had to sit.
"Not all Sam Howell's fault, but you can't even run a functional offense and move the ball," Russell said. "Sam has a better work ethic, more maturity, and better passing skills than RG3 ever had, but he has blown chunks all over himself down the stretch here, and it's absolutely inconceivable how anybody could be mad at Ron for benching him. That's what you do! If somebody absolutely sucks and is getting in the way of anything you're trying to do, you have to bench him if you have a reasonable alternative!"
He gets it if you wonder why other underperformers haven't been benched, but…
"It's the quarterback position, and it does not matter what Ron Rivera has been saying since January, because diarrhea comes out of his mouth half the time," Rooster said. "What matters is if you're gonna ask 52 other guys to put their bodies on the line and if you're going to try and coach and show up and do what you're supposed to do, even though we don't want you to do it, you bench Sam Howell and you put in Jacoby Brissett. I have ZERO problem with it at all. It does not matter what he's been preaching or yelling about or leaking in the media – the message is diarrhea at this point. You do what you have to do to try and win a game when you're a head coach, and the only thing they could have done over the last two weeks was bench Sam Howell and put in Jacoby Brissett, and nothing else matters."
