But then, late in Sunday’s loss to the Los Angeles Rams, everything changed. Coach Ron Rivera benched quarterback Sam Howell, and backup Jacoby Brissett started chucking the ball deep to McLaurin. Go route, corner route, go route. One went for a touchdown. Another nearly did. McLaurin finished with six catches and 141 yards — a career high.
The late stretch was, for the mild-mannered McLaurin, a polite reminder he can still play like an elite receiver.
“You always want to put your best foot forward coming out,” McLaurin said Wednesday. “I know what I’m capable of, and I believe our coaches and my teammates believe that as well. It was just good to be able to do that in a game situation where we needed to have it, and [it] gave our team some energy.”
After a terrible month for the offense, Howell will face plenty of questions over the final three weeks of the season. One of them is whether he can maximize the team’s top receiver. Howell and McLaurin have rarely seemed completely synced up, and on Monday, Rivera said their connection is “still developing.” The immediate success Brissett had with McLaurin put that into stark relief — and the three big plays can’t simply be attributed to the Rams playing soft defense to protect a late lead.
It might be tough for Howell to find McLaurin over the next three weeks. The New York Jets, San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys all have elite defenses with talented secondaries. Washington faces arguably the NFL’s best corners Sunday at MetLife Stadium: the tall, long tandem of Sauce Gardner and D.J. Reed.
“It’s kind of a case-by-case thing,” Howell said Wednesday when asked how the team could get McLaurin more involved. “Every play is kind of different, and there were some chances late in the [Rams] game where they kind of left him one-on-one, and we took advantage of it. But, I mean, we try to do those things every single game when we get those opportunities.”
“We got to find the ways to be explosive and use [McLaurin] in these last few games,” Rivera said.
McLaurin’s relatively quiet year has been surprising. The Commanders’ offense is on track to run 774 pass plays this season — just behind the 2022 Tampa Bay Buccaneers for the most ever (777) — and McLaurin is on pace for a career-high 136 targets. But for several reasons, including an increase in off-target throws and a decrease in yards after the catch, McLaurin is on pace to produce average to below-average stats: 80 catches, 1,013 yards and four touchdowns.
One of the biggest reasons is Howell’s inexperience. In a recent “Take Command” podcast episode, Logan Paulsen, an NFL veteran and Commanders broadcast analyst, detailed a few examples of how Howell’s struggles to diagnose coverage structures presnap have prevented him from finding receivers for explosive plays.
Early against the Rams, he said, Howell saw Los Angeles playing two high safeties and made an okay play by throwing quickly to the flat for a short gain. But if Howell had recognized the coverage was a disguise, Paulsen said, he could have adjusted and thrown to McLaurin, who won his one-on-one to the outside.
Later, against a similar concept, Howell threw to McLaurin on the outside, seemingly expecting a one-on-one. But the Rams, anticipating the adjustment, kept a safety over top. Howell threw the ball right at two defenders, and it would have been an interception had one not run into the other.
“If Sam can identify the coverage, he’d be okay,” Paulsen said.
In the fourth quarter, Brissett diagnosed the defensive looks and found McLaurin when he won two one-on-ones. For the last big play, a 48-yard near-touchdown, McLaurin beat press coverage off the line of scrimmage and drew defensive pass interference in the process. After the game, McLaurin pointed out that “obviously, we’ve continued to help Sam grow and develop, but you can’t beat the experience [Brissett has] had.”
In the locker room, McLaurin said he believes in Howell and the offense’s ability to hit explosive plays earlier in games. After the big plays against Los Angeles, McLaurin pointed out, the Rams had to put a safety over the top of him, which opened up the rest of the field.
“Against a team like [the Jets] this week, where they do a good job of keeping things in front of them, I think it’s going to be on us to … take the underneath stuff, get three, four yards,” McLaurin said. “We’re going to get some [deep shot] opportunities because we know they play a little bit of flatfoot [technique] with their safeties, and sometimes their corners are aggressive. If we get the opportunity, we definitely got to make that happen.”
The Commanders are betting Howell will keep growing, and if he can find his top wideout for big plays, it would help McLaurin continue to be a game changer.
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