Sam Howell Didn’t Help His Case Against New England
On a day when he needed a convincing performance against the New England Patriots in light of undrafted free agent QB Max Brosmer being all the rage as of late, Sam Howell did quite the opposite; he stunk up U.S. Bank Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
In the preseason showcase that saw the Minnesota Vikings sit most of their starters, Sam Howell was the first Vikings QB to get action to begin the game, seeing as he has been the assumed QB2 to J.J. McCarthy’s QB1 ever since the Vikings acquired him from the Seahawks via trade during the 2025 NFL Draft.
Howell ended up not getting much playing time, which stunted any opportunity for him to bounce back from his lackluster start to the contest.
The QB went a measly one completion on five attempts for 13 yards and one interception, thrown on his third pass attempt of the game into the hands of New England’s Alex Austin. Howell completed his first pass of the game on his fourth attempt, a pass to the right flats to tight end Nick Vannett. Howell would toss an incompletion on his next try and was then replaced by Brett Rypien.
Of course, he wasn’t sat down on the bench by Coach O’Connell just because of the bad performance; Howell was probably always going to come out of the game after just a couple of drives in favor of the QB3 showdown between Rypien and the Minnesota Golden Gophers undrafted free agent Max Brosmer. Though today was a tough showing, it’s still most likely that Howell will be the Vikings’ QB2 going into the 2025 NFL season.
The aforementioned Rypien and Brosmer both had pretty stellar days at the QB position, as both men need to show the coaching staff their best as they duke it out for the QB3 position in Minnesota. Rypien made the first appearance of the two signal-callers, dishing seven completions on 11 attempts for 83 yards. No touchdowns, but on the bright side, no interceptions either. Rypien put on a solid performance, and didn’t really do anything to lose ground in the QB3 race.
Max Brosmer also had a respectable showing, as he got the most action out of any QB wearing purple in the Twin Cities on this day. He went 15 of 127 for 156 yards, no touchdowns, and threw an interception on the last play of the game, where the Vikings trailed by eight points and needed to take a shot to try and end the game in a tie (since there’s no overtime in preseason football).
Though Sam Howell had a considerably worse day than all of the other participating QBs in the Vikings locker room, it would take some more of those and some bad practice sessions for him to lose the QB2 spot, given his NFL experience of 18 career starts (all for the Washington Commanders) and proven ability to at least lead offenses down the field.
