The Breakdown: Is Washington Commanders DL Johnny Newton on cusp of a breakout season?

The conventional wisdom on Jer’Zhan “Johnny” Newton is that he has yet to play up to the expectations of his NFL draft status.  They were set very high by GM Adam Peters’ comments after picking Newton No. 36 overall in the second round of the 2024 draft:

…Johnny, we could not believe he was still there. We were a little nervous that he wasn’t going to make it to us at 36. We looked at moving up to get him, very surprising. We had a first-round grade on him and he is an explosive, violent player. He’s a team captain. He got the Commander tag and he’s exactly who we want to bring in this building. We think he’s an advanced player who can come in and play right away. Really a three-down player who you can play on the run downs, play on pass downs, skilled, hands and feet are tied together. And he arrives violently when he gets to the ball and he plays just like we want him to play. So just thrilled to get Johnny.

…Johnny, we could not believe he was still there. We were a little nervous that he wasn’t going to make it to us at 36. We looked at moving up to get him, very surprising. We had a first-round grade on him and he is an explosive, violent player. He’s a team captain. He got the Commander tag and he’s exactly who we want to bring in this building. We think he’s an advanced player who can come in and play right away. Really a three-down player who you can play on the run downs, play on pass downs, skilled, hands and feet are tied together. And he arrives violently when he gets to the ball and he plays just like we want him to play. So just thrilled to get Johnny.

Heading into his third NFL season, his first playing in Daronte Jones’ exotic defense, questions abound about whether Newton was worth the Commanders’ investment of an early-second round pick.

In his first two seasons, Newton has filled a rotational role in the Commanders’ defensive front.  His rookie season was hampered by recovery from offseason foot surgery. Nevertheless, he stepped up when starter Jonathan Allen missed nine games, and ended up playing 51% of regular-season defensive snaps, the second largest share among interior defensive linemen.  In 2025, his playing time dropped to 38% of defensive snaps, placing him third in the rotation behind starters Javon Kinlaw (63.6%) and Daron Payne (53.3%). 

Newton’s production totals to date have been relatively modest. As we’ll see in a minute, though, raw production stats taken out of context can be deceiving. But before we get to that, we need to take a look at what kind of player Newton is. That will tell us what performance matters.

Simplistically speaking, we can think of two poles of defensive line play. Space-eating defensive linemen use size and power to clog running lanes and occupy blocks to allow their teammates to make plays in the running and passing games. At a listed weight of 6-foot-2 and 295 pounds, Newton lacks the bulk we typically associate with two-gapping iDL, and he lacks the power to make up for his less than prototypical size. He will likely never be the guy to hold the point of attack in the running game or eat double teams to free up edge defenders and blitzers in the pass rush.

Toward the other pole of the position group are the gap shooters. Newton is an example of the typically smaller interior defenders who win with explosiveness to gain penetration and make plays in the backfield. In addition to exceptional athleticism, Newton’s skillset includes good anticipation, advanced hand fighting skills to defeat blocks and unexpected pursuit speed to catch runners from behind and chase plays across the formation.

So, why hasn’t that skillset translated to high-level sack production or tackles for loss totals after two years in the league? Or has it?

My previous article on UDFA WR hopeful, Jayden Bradley used an analytical technique to look through the veil of confounding factors to see how good receivers really are at coming down with the football. This one uses a lot simpler math to adjust for the one factor which bedevils most comparisons between players based on statistical totals – differences in playing time.

Players are frequently ranked based on production stats, which are based on cumulative totals. Such comparisons can be revealing — to a certain extent. But using raw production stats can lead to erroneous conclusions, like Emmitt Smith being a better running back than Barry Sanders.

Adjusting production totals for differences in numbers of opportunities or playing time gives productivity stats (e.g. yards per carry). Productivity stats tell us more about a player’s ability to produce on the field than which player got the most playing time or opportunities to compile stats.  This becomes particularly important when evaluating players with limited playing time, like Newton.

To evaluate where Newton is up to and where he might be headed, this analysis will focus on stats that speak to performance at making high-impact plays in his role as a penetrating interior defender. These include metrics for the pass rush, stopping the run short of its goal and generating turnovers. 

To start things off, let’s take a step back and have a look at the official NFL cumulative stats, as reported by Pro Football Reference. While I have already pointed out some limitations, these stats illustrated below are most often used to rank and compare players.

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The bar graphs show Newton’s regular- plus post-season totals in 2024 (gold) and 2025 (burgundy). Numbers above the bars indicate his rank among the top 96 NFL starters and major contributors at iDL in each season (2024: min. 365 defensive snaps; 2025: min. 400 defensive snaps).

Newton played 586 defensive snaps, with 11 starts, as a rookie. He finished the season around the middle of the pack among major contributors at iDL in both sacks (rank 55, 43rd percentile) and QB hits (rank 42, 56th percentile).  He was above league average at generating tackles for loss (rank 28, 71st percentile). Despite common perceptions, the production total was not bad at all for a rookie coming back from offseason foot surgery.  Johnny’s numbers did got a boost from playing in three more games than players on teams that failed to make the playoffs. But that is balanced to some extent by the fact that he did not get as much playing time as most designated starters, even counting the nine games when he filled in for Jonathan Allen, because of the relatively flat distribution of snaps in Joe Whitt’s defensive-line rotation.

Newton’s playing time diminished to 432 snaps with two starts in 2025, playing third in the defensive-line rotation behind Javon Kinlaw and Daron Payne in just 17 regular season games, with no postseason.  Nevertheless, his sack production more than doubled, and his quarterback hit total increased as well. Newton led Commanders interior defensive linemen in sacks despite only playing 60% as many snaps as primary starter Javon Kinlaw. His sack total was the 19th highest among 98 iDL (min 400 snaps). 

The one area where Newton’s production took a backward step was tackles for loss, dropping from seven as a rookie to just four (rank 58, 40th percentile) in his sophomore season.  While this could be taken as an indication of a step back in run defense, since most TFLs occur on running plays, they don’t tell the whole story. There is better metric of impact in the running game, which we’ll get to in a minute.      

Overall, the raw, unadjusted production stats show Newton starting out as a middle of the pack pass rusher in his rookie season with a knack for catching ball carriers in the backfield. His impact in the pass rush took a big step forward in his second season, despite getting less playing time. While TFL production took a big step backward.

Now, let’s see what playing-time-adjusted and advanced stats have to say.

The increase in pass-rush production despite a drop in playing time suggests that Newton made a big jump in productivity in his sophomore campaign. To get a more meaningful measure of his improvement in the pass rush, let’s look at two metrics: pressure rate and sack rate. 

Pressure rate (Press %), derived from PFF’s total pressures, is the percentage of pass-rush snaps on which a rusher generated pressure (sacks, QB hits or hurries).  It provides a more comprehensive view of a player’s impact in the pass rush than just sacks and QB hits. The third component, hurries, is an advanced stat, derived from film breakdowns. Scoring hurries involves an element of subjectivity, which leads to skepticism among some fans. For that reason, I also included sack rate (Sack %), which is simply the NFL official sack count as a percentage of pass rush snaps. This is an uncontroversial stat, and arguably the most important pass-rush impact metric.      

The following table shows Newton’s increase in pass-rush impact from 2024 to 2025.  League ranks are shown in parentheses.

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Newton generated pressure on 7.8% of pass rush snaps to rank 45th out of 96 iDL (53rd percentile) in his rookie season. As expected from the unadjusted league stats, his pass rush productivity took a massive jump to 10th in the league (90th percentile) in his sophomore campaign. Newton’s 11.8% pressure rate last season is almost a good figure for an edge rusher. In fact, he was more productive than DE Jacob Martin (11.0%), and within a percentage point of Preston Smith (12.5%), Von Miller (12.5%), and Deatrich Wise (12.1%).    

While those figures were impressive, the improvement in sack productivity was even greater.  Newton’s sack rate rose from 0.7% (rank 59, 39th percentile), as a rookie, to 2.2% in his second season (rank 6, 94th percentile). The only iDL ranked above him were Brandon Dorlus (ATL, 2.7%), Justin Eboigbe (LAC, 2.5%), Jeffery Simmons (TEN, 2.4%), Malcolm Roach (DEN, 2.3%) and Maliek Collins (CLV, 2.23%).

In summary, by his second NFL season, Newton was already producing pressure and sacks at rates placing him in the top 10% of interior defenders. The only thing holding him back from posting impressive totals was playing time.

There are two primary ways that an interior defensive lineman can make an impact in the running game. He can take on blocks and clog running lanes to allow teammates to make plays. That is not Newton’s strength. And fortunately for him, there are currently no readily available, satisfying stats for that aspect of iDL play.

As a gap-shooter, Newton impacts the running game by beating blockers to the snap and slipping by them to make plays in the backfield or close to the line of scrimmage.

PFF’s run stop rate is an improvement over tackle counts and even tackles for loss to quantify the impact of penetrating interior defensive linemen in run defense. Run stop rate is another advanced stat, but the only subjective element to it is deciding which defender is responsible for a tackle. The rest is simply putting yardage gained into the context of down and distance.

A stop is a tackle which represents a win for the defense. It is defined as stopping the runner short of 40% of the yards to gain on first down, 50% on second down or preventing a conversion or score on third or fourth down.  Stop rate is simply the percentage of rushing downs on which a defender makes a stop.

The following table illustrates Newton’s improvement in run stopping from 2024 to 2025.

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In contrast to the unadjusted tackle for loss totals, Newton’s run stop rate figures showed substantial improvement in his second season. This illustrates the importance of adjusting for playing time, since the raw run stop counts make it look like he took a step back in 2025.

As a rookie, Newton logged a modest 5.3% run stop rate, ranking 73rd among 96 iDL (24th percentile). In 2025, that increased to 6.6% and improved his ranking to 53rd (45th percentile). He was still below league average, but only by a hair. 

Newton’s pass rush is well ahead of his run defense at this point in his career. But if he can continue improving his technique, he doesn’t have far to go to at least reach average starting level as a run stopper, if not better.

The last metric I’ll look at is admittedly a bit iffy. While they are high-impact plays, forced fumbles are rare events, which creates challenges for statistical analysis. Only 37 iDL recorded forced fumbles in 2024, and 29 in 2025. The most FFs recorded by any single player was three in either season; and only six iDL recorded more than one FF in each season.

Nevertheless, the best interior defensive linemen in the business tend to be consistent producers over multiple seasons, and forced fumbles are very relevant to Newton’s role as a backfield disruptor. The following table shows Newton’s FF output in 2024 and 2025:

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Newton has produced single forced fumbles in each NFL season. That might not seem like a lot. But it makes him one of only seven interior defensive linemen to produce forced fumbles in 2024 and 2025. Furthermore, relative to playing time, he ranks in the top 20% of iDL in both seasons.

The pass rush productivity data showed that Newton emerged as one of the most effective interior pass rushers in the NFL in his second season. While his productivity against the run has lagged that of the pass rush he was just a little below average in 2025. To summarize where that placed him, the following figure plots pressure rate in the pass rush against run stop rate for the most active 96 interior defensive linemen in 2025.

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The gold lines in the plot indicate the average values of the two variables. Players in the upper right quadrant excelled at pressuring the QB and stopping the run. Newton’s teammate, Javon Kinlaw, just made it inside the “good at both” quadrant. He was just above average in both phases on defense. The closest player to him is Jonathan Allen, whom he replaced in the lineup.

Newton sits near the top of the upper left quadrant, which contains players who excel in the pass rush but were below average at stopping the run. As we have already seen, Newton was very good at pressuring the quarterback, by league standards, but was a little below average as a run stopper.

The lower right quadrant contains players who were above average at stopping the run and below average at generating pressure, including Commanders stalwart Daron Payne. 

The bottom left quadrant contains players who were below average in both phases. Fortunately, none of the top three players in the Commanders’ iDL rotation found themselves in the naughty corner of the plot. 

This analysis has revealed tremendous growth in important facets of Newton’s game in his first two seasons in Washington. In his first fully-healthy season, he quietly emerged as one of the most productive interior rushers in the NFL, playing as the third man in the Commanders’ rotation. His productivity at stopping the run has lagged behind the pass rush, though it also showed moderate improvement.

The common perception that he has performed below expectation relative to his draft status is already at odds with his pass rush productivity stats from 2025, and there is reason to expect further improvements in 2026.

When asked about players he expects to make a big leap this season, Head Coach Dan Quinn had this to say:

“First one that comes to mind is defensive tackle Johnny Newton,” Quinn told Kevin Clark on This Is Football. “His first year was injuries, had a foot injury to come in, I think he’s a guy that’s about to absolutely take off. As a defensive tackle, man is he quick. Beating somebody to the spot, his ability as an interior rusher, I think he’ll be somebody you say, ‘I remember talking to Dan in March or April and this guy turned out to be a heavy hitter.'”

Quinn’s bullishness on Newton, no doubt, is driven in large part to the switch to an aggressive, attacking defense, under defensive coordinator Daronte Jones, which should play to Newton’s strength as a gap shooter, while Tim Settle, Payne and Kinlaw handle the heavy duties in run defense and occupy blocks in the pass rush.        

If Newton can continue to build on the progress he has made in his first two seasons, he has a good chance to emerge as a major disruptive force in Jones’ exotic pressure schemes. 

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