{"id":854577,"date":"2026-04-05T04:52:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T04:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/854577\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T04:52:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T04:52:18","slug":"mike-mccarthy-reveals-biggest-thing-will-howard-must-improve-he-has-everything-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/854577\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike McCarthy Reveals ‘Biggest Thing’ Will Howard Must Improve: ‘He Has Everything Else’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike McCarthy has praised Will Howard to the heavens, but even he knows the Steelers\u2019 second-year quarterback is not perfect. At the annual league meeting, Pittsburgh\u2019s head coach spoke of Howard as a viable starting candidate<\/a>. Even still, reviewing his practice tape, he saw plenty to work on. Especially one aspect of his game, which he revealed at the same event.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the biggest thing with Will [Howard], and it\u2019s probably consistent with young quarterbacks, they\u2019ve got to win from the pocket,\u201d McCarthy declared, via the Steelers\u2019 website<\/a>. \u201cAt the end of the day. 9 or 10 games a year are gonna come down to the two-minute drill. That\u2019s what the stats tell you. That\u2019s the way we train. His ability to win from the pocket, then, is a key area of growth. Because I think he has everything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that in our own draft profile of Will Howard<\/a>, a lot of his cons are related to footwork. Mike McCarthy suggested that Howard study Aaron Rodgers and see how he uses his feet<\/a> to drive the ball. Alex Kozora noted his \u201cquestionable ability to truly drive and zip the ball\u201d and his tendency to \u201cdrift back from [his] landing spot. We also described him as a \u201cclunky\u201d \u201cstiff and linear athlete.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nobody was going to draft Will Howard as a 21st-century athletic quarterback, of course. And Mike McCarthy is certainly not talking about him putting together a 1,000-yard rushing season. But he sees an immense area \u2014 and need \u2014 for growth in how the young quarterback uses his lower body. Not just to navigate the pocket, but also to direct and drive the football.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can talk about his throwing motion. You can talk about some things throwing the ball. I think there\u2019s a lot of growth with his feet,\u201d McCarthy reiterated of Howard. \u201cThe challenge I see in college football is it\u2019s so scheme-heavy, and they\u2019re running these quarterbacks, and their schemes are diverse, so there\u2019s not a lot of training in the footwork.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike McCarthy believes in Tom Arth\u2019s ability to work with Will Howard on this, since he is the only offensive coach that he retained from the Steelers\u2019 previous staff. As a rookie sixth-round pick, of course, he didn\u2019t get a ton of reps. A training camp injury also wiped out most of the most critical development period he would have had last year.<\/p>\n

Even with the significant limitations of the evaluation up to this point, though, McCarthy is still fired up to sink his teeth into the Will Howard experiment<\/a>. All the while, he is still regularly talking to Aaron Rodgers and hoping he signs, of course. Indeed, he may already know that Rodgers is going to sign. And if he does, that probably makes it even easier to talk up a player who doesn\u2019t even have preseason experience<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mike McCarthy has praised Will Howard to the heavens, but even he knows the Steelers\u2019 second-year quarterback is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2055],"tags":[7,7866,6,520,57,2360,426,691,2183],"class_list":{"0":"post-854577","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-steelers","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-mike-mccarthy","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-pittsburgh","12":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers","13":"tag-pittsburghsteelers","14":"tag-steelers","15":"tag-trending","16":"tag-will-howard"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116350310659442640","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}