Steelers Now
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Darnell Washington channeled his inner Shaquille O’Neal and pretended a goalpost at EverBank Stadium was a basketball hoop, but a yellow flag wasn’t quite the rating the massive Pittsburgh Steelers tight end had hoped for after his celebratory dunk on Saturday night.
After squeezing a 19-yard touchdown pass from Mason Rudolph on their team’s first offensive series of a preseason game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, the 6-foot-7 Washington jammed the ball over the crossbar.
The action drew a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Before dunking over the goalpost was banned by the NFL in 2014, former Kansas City Chiefs tight end Tony Gonzalez did his part in popularizing it. Washington doesn’t think there should be a rule against it.
“Unless it’s, like, excessive hanging on it, then OK … maybe not that,” Washington said afterward. “But, I mean, just a quick little tap or whatever, I feel like (there’s) no harm.”
Washington said he knew he wasn’t allowed to celebrate in such a way.
“I knew something like that, something like that along the lines,” Washington said.
Darnell Washington scores the @Steelers' first TD of the preseason 😤
Stream on @NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/RkRDyRnC3Z
— NFL (@NFL) August 9, 2025
According to MaxPreps, Washington averaged 6.1 points and 5.8 rebounds per game on the hardwood as a senior at Desert Pines High School in Las Vegas.
Washington later discussed why avoiding infractions is crucial to the Steelers’ success on offense.
“We talk about pre-snap penalties — that’s jumping offsides, things like that,” Washington said. “Even post-snap penalties, holding. All that stuff can’t come back to bite us in the play at the end. I feel like that’s probably the key thing if you wanna be a good offense, is (to) eliminate all the penalties.
“We can’t worry about, ‘Oh, we just got a big play. Oh, well, they’re calling it back because of this.'”
This article originally appeared on Steelers Now: Steelers TE Darnell Washington Defends Celebratory Dunk Despite Penalty: ‘No Harm’
