The Washington Commanders are pinning their hopes on Sam Howell, a second-year quarterback who has started only one NFL game, and Jacoby Brissett, a veteran who is on his fourth team in as many seasons. It’s a gamble that is in stark contrast to the team’s aggressive approach last year to try to solve its quarterback problem by trading for Carson Wentz.
So why aren’t the Commanders chasing a more proven talent — such as, say, Lamar Jackson — or moving into position to draft a top quarterback?
“You look at what the impact on your roster-building is,” Coach Ron Rivera said at the NFL’sannual meetings in Phoenix last month. “What were the assets that we would have to use to get [Jackson]? What would the financial impact be? These are the things that we have to think about separate from anyone else. This is why we did what we’re doing.”
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Youth and salary cap space — Brissett and Howell have a combined cap charge of $9.5 million — are among the factors driving the Commanders’ decisions, but the team’s quarterback situation could be about more than just Howell and Brissett. The last time Washington had one starter for a complete season was 2017, with Kirk Cousins. Every season since, the team has needed at least three quarterbacks. The player who started the most games over the past three years was undrafted and signed as an insurance policy: Taylor Heinicke.
That means the Commanders’ decision at the No. 3 quarterback spot — a position that usually garners little attention — matters. A lot.
“It is a priority to have a third quarterback,” said Rivera, who hasn’t ruled out Jake Fromm as a potential third-stringer. “... [Fromm] is a heck of a football player. Very smart, very bright guy.”
Other teams may be more compelled to invest in their third-string quarterbacks as well, especially after watching the San Francisco 49ers, who were reminded twice last season of the importance of quarterback depth. In December, after injuries sidelined Trey Lance and Jimmy Garoppolo, they turned to Brock Purdy, “Mr. Irrelevant” of the 2022 draft, who quickly became the most relevant player on the 49ers’ roster.
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Purdy led the 49ers to five wins to close the regular season and then won a pair of playoff games. But when he and his backup, fourth-stringer Josh Johnson, suffered injuries in the NFC championship game, the 49ers were quarterback-less. Purdy reentered the game but played essentially with only one arm.
“There’s no reason for you not to take a late-round quarterback this year, even if your [top two quarterbacks] are set,” ESPN draft analyst Jordan Reid said on a recent conference call with reporters. “We saw what happened to the 49ers in the NFC title game — you don’t want to be in a situation. Or, if that happens to you, you want to have that emergency player off the bench.”
The 49ers thought they had enough of a contingency plan.
“Ironically … I felt really good going into training camp that we were kind of insulated in the event that anything happened,” San Francisco General Manager John Lynch told reporters at the NFL combine. “Unfortunately it wasn’t quite enough. It got us right at the end.”
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Earlier this year, the Detroit Lions proposed bringing back the rule that would allow each team to designate an emergency third quarterback from its inactive list or practice squad who wouldn’t count against the game-day limit but could enter a game if the starter and backup were ruled out. Such a policy was in effect for nearly two decades before the 2011 collective bargaining agreement expanded game-day rosters from 45 to 46 players.
The Lions’ proposal was tabled until the league’s May meetings. No matter how it’s resolved, it’s possible more teams will consider activating three quarterbacks or adding late-round quarterbacks this year.
“Those late-round guys are like lottery tickets to me,” Reid said. “Brock Purdy was a great example of that, and we’ve seen guys in years past that have gone on to be those Day 3 players and they end up turning into starters. Even if they don’t turn into starters for you, they end up turning into assets, too. We’ve seen it in years past, whether it’s Jimmy Garoppolo ... [or] Jacoby Brissett, when he was coming up, too. We’ve seen these late-round quarterbacks go on to be lottery tickets, in a sense.”
Howell is the only quarterback Washington has drafted after the third round since 2016, when it selected Nate Sudfeld in the sixth. He is also the only quarterback a Rivera-led team has picked on Day 3 of the draft; Rivera has typically relied on free agency for his final quarterback spots, adding Steven Montez and Heinicke in 2020 and Fromm last season.
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Washington has eight picks in this year’s draft, including five in the last four rounds, and it will have to decide what type of player it will prioritize in new offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy’s system. The skill sets and sizes of the quarterbacks in this year’s class vary, giving the Commanders options should they look for a developmental player to add to the room.
Tanner McKee, a 6-foot-6 passer out of Stanford, has the coveted size, accuracy and decision-making. Pro Football Focus ranked him alongside projected first-round quarterback prospects C.J. Stroud of Ohio State and Bryce Young of Alabama in accuracy and put him among the top quarterbacks in decision-making. But analysts vary widely in projecting McKee’s NFL potential.
Sports Info Solutions ranks him 13th among draft-eligible quarterbacks in expected points added (EPA) per game (minus-3.8), which quantifies the value of down, distance and field position situation in terms of the average value of the next score. But McKee’s 74 percent on-target rate equals that of Stroud and exceeds the 65 percent of Florida’s Anthony Richardson, another top-ranked quarterback in this year’s class.
Another intriguing tidbit: Tavita Pritchard was McKee’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Stanford. In February, the Commanders hired Pritchard as their quarterbacks coach.
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Besides McKee, Washington has plenty of draft options. If the Commanders want a dual-threat player, there’s UCLA’s Dorian Thompson-Robinson, who had 12 rushing touchdowns last season, tied for the third most of any Football Bowl Subdivision quarterback. Clayton Tune, a 6-3 quarterback out of Houston, has the arm and the decision-making to intrigue. He had 546 rushing yards last year. And Jake Haener of Fresno State has drawn comparisons to Heinicke in size, arm strength and mentality.
Washington also could land a higher-end quarterback who slips in the draft, as it did with Howell. As Rivera said last April after selecting Howell: “We needed a third quarterback, a guy that we have to have developing to be ready just in case.”
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