Howard's biggest struggles are with the RPO. He's not great with not knowing if he's getting the handoff or if Mitch is going to pull it back it. You can see it...he freezes...and then when he does get the ball he's stood up in the backfield because of his hesitation.thunderspirit wrote:It's still zone running, but it's primarily between the tackles (inside zone) instead of outside with sweeps and such.
The key is that the RB should be able to pick lanes (Howard does this well) and get yards after contact (in 2018, Howard did this less well). Some of the latter had to do with Kyle Long being injured and running behind the likes of Eric Kush and Bryan Witzmann instead. Also, running a power scheme with this line would be counterproductive, in my view, as it's not really their calling card.
The biggest issues with Howard in this offense are that he doesn't have that extra gear in the open field and that he doesn't really threaten the defense when he goes out to receive. But trading Howard is as much about his rookie contract expiring in 2020 as it is his meh receiving skills.
They scaled back the RPO stuff towards the end of the year when Howard was in the game, and he had better results.
