Johnny Newton is expected to miss most, if not all, of the 2026 season after tearing a pectoral muscle, a blow that takes another young defensive lineman off the Washington Commanders’ board just as the year is beginning.
The injury lands on a player the Commanders once saw as a potential difference-maker. Newton was a 2024 second-round pick, and the team had spent much of the last two years trying to find the right way to use him after surgeries on both feet delayed the start of his rookie year. When he finally got on the field in 2024, he started 11 games after Jonathan Allen missed most of the season, then was pushed back after the signing of Javon Kinlaw.
That arc matters because Newton’s production never matched the promise attached to him when Washington took him out of Illinois. He recorded five sacks last season, including three sacks in one game against the Dallas Cowboys in Week 17, but he also struggled to stop the run, which made his role easier to shrink than expand. This offseason, Washington signed Tim Settle Jr. to start over him, a clear sign that Newton was already sliding down the pecking order before the injury hit.
The torn pectoral muscle also arrives in a defense that was already being patched together. The Washington Commanders entered the 2026 season after a 5-12 year, and they were also dealing with injuries to Laremy Tunsil, Trey Amos and Nick Allegretti. Newton had been battling Ricky Barber and Shy Tuttle for a backup role on the 3-4 defensive front being implemented by Daronte Jones, which made the fight for snaps even thinner than it looked on paper.
The hard part for Washington is that a pectoral tear is not the kind of injury that usually clears up quickly enough to rescue a season, and the fact that he is expected to miss most, if not all, of 2026 leaves little room for a midyear reset. The question now is less about whether Newton will be part of the rotation and more about whether this is the point where his path in DC runs out entirely.
