Is Johnny Newton ready to replace the injured Jonathan Allen?

With Jonathan Allen lost for the season, can rookie Johnny Newton step up and fill his place?

The Washington Commanders had stayed relatively injury free through the start of this season until this week. Unfortunately star defensive tackle Jonathan Allen tore his pectoral muscle and is now out for the season. Given his contract situation, his career in Washington may well be coming to an end too, but that’s a discussion for another day. For now, the Commanders have to figure out ways to replace him on the field. The obvious answer is rookie defensive tackle Jer’Zhan “Johnny” Newton, who surprisingly fell out of the first round and was available for the Commanders at the top of the second round back in April. 

Newton largely fell in the draft due to his medical report and that medical report caused him to miss most of the offseason recovering from foot surgery. He rarely participated in training camp and missed all three preseason games, so he’s quite far behind in terms of reps compared to the rest of the rookie class. With that in mind, it’s a lot to ask of Newton to replace Allen, who has proven himself to be one of the better defensive tackles in the NFL over the last five years. But of course he will be someone the Commanders will be hoping can step up and fill some of the void left by Allen. 

The biggest part of losing Allen is missing his interior pass rush threat. Allen has long been the Commanders best interior rusher and his signature cross-chop/hump move gives huge issues to just about every guard he uses it on. Newton doesn’t have the array of moves that Allen has, and you wouldn’t expect him to at this point in his career either. But what Newton does offer is burst and quickness. That quickness as an interior rusher is a big asset and Newton has had some effective rushes with it. 

On this play against the Browns, Newton works an interior stunt with Jon Allen. Allen lines up in the A gap between the left guard and center and stunts across the face of the center into the opposite A gap. Newton starts the play lined up on the outside shoulder of the right guard, but as Allen stunts inside, Newton loops around him. Allen’s presence forces the center and right guard to focus on him, while the left guard leaves Allen to the center and turns outside to help the left tackle. This leaves Newton free and he shows his quickness to burst through the gap and close quickly on the quarterback. He can’t quite prevent the throw, but he does hurry the quarterback and lands a good hit, causing the throw to miss its target. 

When Newton is stunting, he can transfer that quickness into power effectively too. 

This time, Newton lines up head up on the right guard, but is actually stunting inside to the center, enabling linebacker Frankie Luvu to join the rush working against the right guard. With Newton stunting inside and the offensive line not able to predict exactly where he’s going, Newton is able to use his quickness to build up some momentum. He then transfers that momentum into power as he engages with the center. Newton could potentially look to shed this block after he begins to drive the center back, but he does a really nice job containing the quarterback with this rush. 

The Commanders knew DeShaun Watson could take off running with his athleticism, so instead of trying to break through on one side of the center and opening up a rush lane for Watson to escape, Newton just continues to drive the center back towards the quarterback. The result of that rush is that as Watson attempts to climb the pocket to avoid Luvu’s rush, he has nowhere to go. The center is right in his lap, preventing him from climbing the pocket. That allows Luvu to latch on and eventually bring him down for the sack. 

So that quickness is clearly a big asset for Newton and he can use it effectively, particularly when stunting. But he’s been a little overly reliant on it too. He needs to be able to back it up with different hand fighting techniques in order to get off blocks and penetrate into the backfield consistently. He had a few reps against the Ravens where he generated some decent pressure with his quickness, but was ultimately unable to get off the block because he didn’t back up the quickness with any sort of move.