This is going to sound really weird on the surface in terms of praising someone for it, but the one thing I'll say about Howard is that he is someone who is smart enough to let a good story be and not try to overwhelm it with too much with his own ideas. He has a good ability to zero in on the storytelling needs of a particular scene, almost always gets his actors to turn in good-to-very good performances, and knows how to wrangle a healthy budget to give the film exactly what it needs without having to go overboard with what he wants instead. Yes, this does ultimately give him a kind of anonymous presence as a director in terms of stylistic approach and ambition, but if you think back to something widely beloved he's done like Apollo 13, that's a story that really didn't need anything else other than a filmmaker to recognize that was a story worth telling without having to bombard the viewer with anything tricky. In a weird way, a lack of flourishing is in itself its own kind of flourish. It is true that Spielberg is way better at that kind of thing, hence all the criticism of Howard being a "budget Spielberg," but being a competent journeyman isn't the worst thing in the world when you have the material to justify that kind of approach.
I don't know what that means for this project in particular, especially since Howard is taking over for a pair that is clearly operating on an opposite end of the spectrum for artistic approach, but I estimate that at the worst, Howard will simply steer this towards being a typical Star Wars kind of movie than it was shaping up to be with Lord & Miller. That could be good, that could be bad, but ultimately, it will be no more or no less what's advertised on the tin.