Johnny Newton stands out in win over Bears

Breaking down the best performance of Newton's rookie season so far.

Commanders rookie defensive tackle Jer’zhan “Johnny” Newton just played the best game of his young career to date. Against the Bears, Newton was credited with three quarterback hits, three tackles and a fumble recovery. He should have also been given his first career sack on a busted run-pass option where Caleb Williams hesitated throwing the ball and Newton brought him down, but they called that a tackle for loss instead. Seeing Newton step up will be encouraging for the Commanders, who had been very patient with him this offseason as he battled through multiple foot injuries. It’s timely too, with star defensive tackle Jonathan Allen lost for the season. 

The Commanders coaching staff deserve credit too. I wrote a few weeks ago when Allen got injured that Newton had been a little inconsistent and was overly reliant on his quickness instead of developing other parts of his game. Those other parts of his game are still developing, but the coaching staff recognized his quickness is his main threat right now and put him in positions to best use that quickness effectively. 

This was one of the final defensive plays of the game, but it’s a great example of how the coaching staff helped Newton make the most out of what he’s doing best right now. Newton’s quickness off the snap is a huge asset against interior lineman, especially centers. Centers can struggle with quicker defensive tackles because they have to snap the ball with one hand and then try and get it back into position as quickly as possible. That gives a quick rusher like Newton something to take advantage of.

You can see Newton anticipate the center raising his right hand as quickly as possible after the snap to try and get that hand back in the fight. Newton gets off the snap quickly and immediately swats that hand down. With the center focusing on getting his snapping hand into the equation and immediately having it knocked down, he has no way of slowing down Newton.

Newton penetrates past the center with ease and the center does his best to lean on Newton to slow him down. He does just enough to buy the quarterback time to deliver the throw, but Newton lands a hit and prevents the quarterback from delivering an accurate pass. Unfortunately, Benjamin St-Juste gave up a defensive pass interference, wiping out the play, but it was still a good example of how Newton’s quickness can be such a strong trait for him, especially against centers. Because of that, the Commanders were smart in consistently getting him lined up directly over the center. Typically, you’d only see a big, 350-pound nose tackle line up directly over the center trying to control the run game, but the Commanders consistently put Newton there to let him use his quickness effectively. 

Here we can see Newton lined up directly over the center again. At the snap of the ball, he uses his quickness to fire his hands into the chest of the center before the center can get his hand back up from snapping the ball. With that hand placement, Newton gains all the leverage and can do what he wants with the center. He peeks into the backfield and spots the quarterback faking a hand off to the running back on a play-action fake. As soon as he knows it’s a pass and not a run, Newton turns into pass rush mode. He quickly works across the center, driving forward with his feet and dropping his hands at the same time to pull the center off balance. That enables him to shed the block and penetrate into the backfield. 

The center tries to basically tackle Newton to prevent him getting through, but Newton maintains his balance as he bends around the block and closes in on the quarterback. Caleb Williams does a good job stepping up to try and avoid Newton, but Newton is able to catch him and bring him down, forcing Williams to throw the ball away just before being sacked. 

By using Newton in this way, the Commanders set him up to be successful and at the same time, let him earn more reps to learn other aspects of his game. His quickness has been his best trait but it can’t be his only trait. In this game we started to see him work on other areas of his pass rush.