ASHBURN — Duke Howell can still hear the breathing on the other end of his headset. The former Sun Valley High School offensive coordinator, stationed up in the coaches’ box, often found himself yelling into the microphone as he chastised the player below for a mistake on the field. Those outbursts usually were met with near-silence. Only the faint sounds of breathing coming from the sideline.
For the Commanders, the relationship between the 22-year-old starter and the veteran assistant coach will largely determine how the 2023 campaign plays out. Duke, who became his son’s offensive coordinator in high school, firmly believed the quarterback — especially one who was the coach’s son — needed to be willing to take more criticism than the next guy.During Howell’s freshman year, Duke spent the season calling plays from the sideline. “And then I never did it again,” he said. By the following fall, Duke moved up to the coaches’ box with the belief that he could keep his emotions more in check.
“We were never the parents to say, ‘Well, let me go talk to the coach,’” Duke said. “It’s like, ‘Earn it.’”Howell brought that earn-it mindset with him to the NFL. When the North Carolina product got wind that Bieniemy was coming to Washington, he dove into the ins and outs of Kansas City’s offense. “He was prepared for it, but now it’s, ‘Hey, man, we’ve been talking about this day since you were 14, right?’” said Anthony Boone, Howell’s personal quarterbacks coach. “So now it’s time to — all the talk, all the hours, all the late nights, all the early mornings — now it’s time to channel that into what EB wants you to do, what Coach Rivera wants you to do and what the team needs you to do to win week in and week out.
From there, Bieniemy made sure Howell had the right materials. Even before the quarterback had full access to this year’s playbook, Bieniemy prepared a 25- to 30-page binder of his scheme’s base foundations for Howell. Once meetings and practices started, Bieniemy noticed Howell ask smart, intuitive questions — as well as injecting his own opinions. “Like most quarterbacks, they want to be right,” Bieniemy grins.