Hogs Haven
Throughout the 2025 NFL season, SB Nation’s Doug Farrar writes about the game’s Secret Superstars — those players whose performances might slip under the radar for whatever reasons. In this installment, we focus on Washington Commanders defensive lineman Jer’Zhan {Johnny) Newton, who seems to finally be living up to his potential for a franchise that could use every bit of good news it can get right now.
The 2025 season is not something that anybody involved with the Washington Commanders wanted — or expected. A year after Jayden Daniels enjoyed perhaps the greatest rookie season any quarterback has ever had, and the Dan Quinn-led team made it all the way to the NFC Championship game, the Commanders fell back to earth with a 4-12 record that looks far too much like the 4-13 mark the franchise put up in 2023, before Quinn and Daniels mercifully arrived.
The reasons are the reasons — injuries (especially to Daniels), coaching and personnel issues (especially on defense), and a general malaise that did not in any way infect the building the year before — and now, it’s all about looking forward to 2026.
One thing the Commanders will need in 2026 is an improved pass rush. This season, Von Miller leads the team with nine sacks, Jacob Martin leads the team with 41 total pressures, and outside of those two gentlemen, no other Commanders defender has more than 30 quarterback disruptions — that’s Javon Kinlaw with 30 on the nose, and no sacks to speak of.
One guy who was supposed to lead the pack, at least on the interior, was second-year man Jer’Zhan Newton, the 2024 second-round pick from Illinois. I tend to have a bias towards smaller interior defensive linemen who can wreak havoc with the “low man wins” philosophy — this goes from John Randle to Geno Atkins to Grady Jarrett to Aaron Donald — and when I watched the 6’2, 295-pound Newton’s college tape, I thought he was the next in line. I assumed that the Commanders committed outright theft when they were able to pick Newton with the 36th overall pick in the second round.
But outside of a few flashes, Newton hadn’t lived up to that positive potential in the NFL. Injuries and the transition to the pros put an unexpected ceiling on his profile, and through Washington’s Christmas Day game against the Dallas Cowboys, he had amassed just two sacks and 19 total pressures in his second season, after putting up two sacks and 23 total pressures in his first.
There are those who will tell you that pass-rushers generally need a full season or more to adapt to the NFL and its better blockers and more advanced protection schemes. Only those in that aforementioned building could tell you why it’s taken as long as it has for the light to come on for Newton, but it most definitely did against Dallas in the Commanders’ 30-23 loss. Newton absolutely went off before a national television audience, with...
