Jordan Howard came into 2018 with high expectations. Why not? The Chicago Bears offense was set to be renovated like never before under new head coach Matt Nagy. Not only would his system open up the passing game, making life easier for Howard with fewer stacked boxes. It would also employ a blocking scheme that turned Kareem Hunt into the rushing champion the year before.
Things seemed to start off well enough. Howard looked good in the opener against Green Bay, averaging over five yards per carry. Soon though things started going wrong. Week after week the third-year back just couldn’t find any sort of traction. He was getting swallowed up at the line of scrimmage way too often. He seemed lost at times. Uncomfortable.
Some started to wonder if he just wasn’t a fit for Nagy’s offense. A possibility that many had feared. Hence the trade speculation that swirled around him for literal months. As it turns out, the system was the problem but not in any sort of philosophical way. It was a case of Nagy misjudging the player he had and needing time to recognize that mistake.
Matt Nagy fixed his own mistake by running Jordan Howard on zones
For all the great things Nagy did as a play caller this season, his biggest mistake was assuming Howard was the same type of back as Kareem Hunt. That would explain why he installed a blocking scheme where the offensive line would run gap plays, often with a lineman pulling and leading the way into the hole.
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That’s not what Howard had success with over the past two years. It’s not his style. He is a zone runner. In simple terms, the offensive line each pick up a defender going either direction. Howard gets the ball, reads the blocks and then goes for the first opening he sees. Lorin Cox of USA Today discovered via PFF that over the course of the year Nagy figured this out and steadily retracted his changes.
“According to Pro Football Focus, Howard averaged 2.9 yards per carry on gap-scheme runs this season, compared to 4.1 yards per carry when running zone.
As the season went on, Nagy seemed to realize the issue and correct it.
Over the first eight weeks of the season, Howard ran zone on 58.9 percent of his rushes, according to PFF. From Weeks 9-17, his runs were 74.3 percent zone.
Across the final four games of the year, over 84 percent of Howard’s carries were zone runs.
It was most clear in Week 17, when PFF charted him with two gap scheme runs compared to 20 zone carries, including his longest rush of the season.”
Howard really seemed to find his groove again over the final five games of the season. He averaged a healthy 4.5 yards per carry, collected 399 yards and scored four touchdowns. His 109 yards in Minnesota marked just the second time in 2018 that the Vikings defense allowed a 100-yard rusher. His confidence is booming at exactly the right time.
Credit Nagy for not being stubborn about it and simply going back to what worked before.
