The Pittsburgh Steelers gained a walk-off win over the Washington Commanders on Sunday via penalty. I don’t know how many games end on a neutral-zone infraction, but I’m guessing it’s not many. While the offending player, Jer’Zhan Newton, has had the full support of his teammates, he also had good reason to be ready to fire off the ball.
According to Sam Fortier of the Washington Post, Newton spent the game playing off a “tell” he saw from Steelers C Zach Frazier. The reporter writes that the Commanders rookie read a quarterback sneak on that 4th-and-1 play from the Steelers, which prompted him to jump. He said he has to take responsibility and “be more mature in the moment”, but in that moment, he listened to his instinct. And his instinct said “Go!” when he saw his cue.
Now, I don’t know what tell Newton saw from Frazier that made him fire off the ball—perhaps thought he saw it. I do know this is not the first time the Steelers had gone for it on 4th and 1 against the Commanders late in the fourth quarter, and they did run a play. The situation wasn’t the same—a tie game with almost five minutes to play—but the Steelers were aggressive all game. Quite frankly, it’s a lot easier to claim “everybody knew” the Steelers weren’t going to run a play in hindsight.
While Frazier revealed after the game that the Steelers had no play called and were not going to snap the ball, it is not unreasonable for the Commanders to have believed that they might. It is entirely within Mike Tomlin’s character to do so when he is confident in his offense. And with Russell Wilson, he has that confident swagger back.
Of course, Job One in that situation is always to not beat yourself by jumping offsides. Jer’Zhan Newton is painfully aware of that, now more than ever. But that’s why Zach Frazier and Russell Wilson and the Steelers sold the play so hard. I mean, that was literally the entire purpose of putting the offense out there. It just happened to work.
By all appearances, the Commanders have done a great job of having Newton’s back. And I’m sure the Steelers have given Zach Frazier plenty of pats on the back in his first game back from injury. But perhaps they’ll take a closer look at the tape this week and see if he really does have a tell.
Virtually everybody has some kind of tell if you look hard enough. The Steelers’ T.J. Watt is just the sort of player who obsessively looks for them in an attempt to acquire any edge possible. If Newton saw one in Frazier, then that suggests he has a bright future for the Commanders. And perhaps that’s part of the reason why they are galvanized around him right now.
