Howden was a football and track star as a senior at Desert Pines High School in California before heading to Minnesota. He started five of 13 appearances as a true freshman (45 tackles, one interception, three pass breakups). Howden started 12 times in 2019 (57 tackles, one interception, six pass breakups), all seven games in 2020 (37 tackles, one pass breakup) and 12 times in 2021 (43 tackles, 1.5 for loss, five pass breakups). He finished his career with an excellent fifth year, intercepting two passes and breaking up five others while making a career-high 58 tackles (3.5 for loss) in 13 starts. -- by Chad Reuter
Strengths

• Team captain with 49 career starts.
• Keys blocking scheme and immediately attacks run play.
• Adequate patience when scraping with run play development.
• Smooth hip flip to match route breaks with timing.
• Intelligent and instinctive on the back end as deep safety.
• Digests route combinations and flows with quarterback's eyes.

Weaknesses

• Backpedal is a little tight and upright.
• Lacks length and speed to stay with vertical targets downfield.
• Allows blocking receivers to get into his frame.
• Has a tendency to overrun his pursuit leverage at times.
• Feet show stall in lateral change of direction.
• Unable to recover from a bad pursuit angle.

I'm thinking that he's a special teamer who fills a niche in the secondary and grows into our nickel back.