Don’t rule out Sam Howell as the next great Seahawks quarterback

The Seattle Seahawks made Sam Howell a priority as their backup quarterback this offseason. There's good reason for that, as he's already shown he's got what it takes to be the next big thing in Seattle.

John Schneider made it clear that getting Sam Howell on the Seahawks roster to back up Geno Smith was a pretty big deal. As quoted by Brent Stecker for Seattle Sports from Schneider's appearance on his eponymous show, " We were kind of sweating that this morning and talking to the Commanders and Adam Peters, their general manager,” Schneider told hosts Dave Wyman and Bob Stelton. “We were sweating it out. There were several teams involved with it."

Those several teams have been reported to include the Broncos, Vikings, and Rams. When you consider that neither the Broncos nor the Vikings have a proven starter at QB, and Matthew Stafford is approaching that dangerous late-30s stage, you can be sure all three teams had serious interest in Howell. Schneider also brought up a very interesting comparison when discussing Howell's game. As Bob Condotta reported for The Seattle Times, the Hawks GM said, “I was around Brett Favre at a really young age — the guy was throwing interceptions like crazy, and he ended up winning three MVPs,” he said. “I love the way he plays the game. Sam. And Brett.”

The Seattle Seahawks added a QB with great potential in Sam Howell

Yeah, yeah, I know; potential can be one of the worst words in the English language. The thing about Howell is that he's already proven that he can play. A lot of 12s are focused on the interceptions he threw last year. Yes, he led the NFL in a couple of categories you'd rather not have on your resume: sacks and interceptions. But context matters. He also led the league in pass attempts, as the Commanders decided running the ball was too old-school, or something. Howell was blitzed 181 times last year. That tends to happen when the defense knows the ball is going in the air over and over.

So let's do a comparison. The tables below detail stats for five quarterbacks in their first and second years in the league. Not a lot to write home about for any of these guys, as you can see. Three of these guys threw twice as many picks as TDs, and the fourth just missed that mark. Only one player even managed to throw the same percentage of touchdowns as interceptions. And even he got sacked more than Billy Martin by the Yankees.

The picture improved in year two. Well, mostly. Every quarterback cut his interception rate, and all but Player A cut down on their sacks as well. The completion percentage improved across the board. The one inconsistent area was the touchdown rate. Only Player B showed any substantial gains, while Played D saw his scoring rate take a significant hit. Still, he was the only player to connect on over 60 percent of his passes.

Here we have a different set of stats for the same five players. You may have been getting a clearer picture by now of who are five mystery men are. Clearly, none of them got thrown to the wolves like Peyton Manning was in 1998. Sorry, spoiler alert: Manning is not one of the five quarterbacks listed. He did lead the league in interceptions as a rookie with 28, but became Peyton freaking Manning in year two, and every year after. Again, none of these stats make you sit up and say, "That's my quarterback!"

The counting stats for year two show a better picture of the players' improvement. Player A threw another 18 picks but improved in every other category. Player B was certainly the most improved of the group. Even then, 15 interceptions are a bit much, especially when paired with less than 2,600 yards passing. But he was the only one who managed to throw more TDs than picks. Player D threw for 1,300 more yards than his closest competitor and had the highest passer rating. Yes, that's passer rating, not QBR. Note to all the Geno haters: his passer rating last year was 92.1.

So who exactly are these wannabe starters, destined to be career backups? Player A is Troy Aikman. Player B is John Elway. Player C is Steve Young. Player E is Dan Fouts. Oh shoot, I skipped a guy. Player D is our backup QB, Sam Howell. Did I cherry-pick the names on this list? Of course, I did. The point here isn't that Sam Howell is going to be a Hall of Fame quarterback, like the other four QBs listed here. The point is that a solid NFL quarterback might not start out looking like he can do the job, let alone develop into a HOF player. Here are the career stats of these stiffs.

I know what you're thinking, 12s. For the record, I don't think Troy Aikman should be in the Hall of Fame either, but he's in. Also, it's awful to see a 49er stand out above the crowd so much. But Steve Young played on a different level from the three other Hall of Fame QBs here.

Am I saying Sam Howell will turn into a Hall of Fame quarterback? No, not at all. But he does have time to develop his game. He's also in a much better organization than he was in Washington. He's already given the 12s every reason to root for his success. Between Ryan Grubb as his OC and Geno Smith as his tutor, Howell will have every opportunity to grow his game. I think he'll do exactly that.

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