His stunning special teams effort went viral. To Tyler Owens, it was ‘just a normal football play’

It wasn’t the first time Tyler Owens ripped down the field to slam a returner to the ground. It wasn’t even the first time in that game.

But in the second quarter of the Washington Commanders’ loss to the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, Owens’ play as a special-teams gunner made him a household name literally overnight.

Facing a vise, or double-team, in punt coverage, Owens split Eagles jammers Jonathan Jones (a former Commander) and Darius Cooper by essentially tossing them to the side and leaving them in his wake as he pursued returner Britain Covey — whom he then lifted off the ground and body-slammed at Philadelphia’s 38-yard line.

“I feel like it was just a normal football play out there,” Owens told The Athletic on Tuesday.

The rest of the world felt differently.

Video of his play quickly circulated on social media, garnering praise from players, coaches, fans and media members. By Tuesday afternoon, the NFL’s clip of the play had collected 666,000 likes and 10,300 comments on Instagram and had been watched by 11.3 million people on X. It was also played 3 million times on the league’s TikTok account.

“This is legitimately one of the greatest football plays I’ve ever seen,” former All-Pro defensive end and CBS analyst J.J. Watt wrote Monday. “It doesn’t get much better than that right there. Every coach in America will be showing this rep to their team this week.”

Former Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III added that Owens’ play was “one of the greatest ‘GROWN ASS MAN’ plays ever.”

During Monday’s episode of ESPN’s “Get Up,” former NFL head coach Rex Ryan lauded Owens’ effort and said: “I used to say, ‘Play like a Jet.’ … First thing you show would be this thing right here. Not necessarily the great catch or whatever. It’s that. Because it’s about effort. It’s about never stopping. It’s about putting it all on the line, and that’s what that kid did.”

Later that day, former punter Pat McAfee addressed it on his show. “Tyler Owens, you know this because I assume a lot of people have told you,” McAfee began. “I would sacrifice and cut some things off of my body to have this guy as your gunner.”

Owens looked as if he was angry during the play because, well, he kind of was.

He was the backside gunner on three earlier punts against the Eagles and took inside releases. On the first, he blew by Jones and Cooper to chase down Covey for no gain on his return.

“Then on the second, they had kind of caught on and they were really playing hard inside,” Owens said of Jones and Cooper. “I still tried to inside release and they were holding me hard. I tried to tell the ref, like, ‘Can you watch the jammers?’ Because you could easily see they were holding — they were holding my hair, holding my jersey. So I was like, all right, I’m going to fake outside because they’re playing so hard inside that I’m just going to try to split them.”

That Owens had that as a viable option speaks to his rare athleticism. He ran the 100 meters in 10.35 seconds in high school, and recorded a 41-inch vertical jump and 12-foot-2-inch broad jump at the NFL combine in 2024.

An undrafted safety out of Texas Tech, Owens signed with Washington in 2024 and made the team’s active roster as a rookie largely because of his special teams play.

Over the last two years, under coach Dan Quinn and special teams coordinator Larry Izzo, the Commanders have shown little hesitance in using roster spots for elite special-teamers. It’s why they signed veteran Nick Bellore in 2024 and gave him a subsequent two-year deal in 2025 — when he was 36 (Bellore retired before the start of this season). It’s also why Percy Butler was given a contract extension in ’25 and why Jeremy Reaves has become an integral team leader. Another undrafted safety, Reaves was cut by the team multiple times before earning Pro Bowl honors as a special teams player in 2022 and then becoming a defensive starter and captain this season.

“(Tyler) fits that identity that we have with our core group,” Izzo said last week. “He’s a big part of that. He’s a very talented individual, and he’s very productive in terms of winning his one-on-one battles.”

Owens’ knack for winning his one-on-ones started well before he arrived in Washington. He was a four-star safety prospect and track star out of Plano East (Texas) High who spent his first three college seasons at Texas before transferring to Texas Tech.

“We used to call him the Velociraptor,” Texas Tech associate head coach/special teams coordinator Kenny Perry told The Athletic. “Exactly what you saw there, that’s the stuff he did back here. Nobody could block him.”

The Commanders noticed that early. In his first game rep as a gunner, in the 2024 preseason opener against the New York Jets, Owens tackled returner Malachi Corley for no gain. It wasn’t much of a surprise when he made the initial roster as a rookie.

“At the end of it, when you’re really trying to establish an identity that you’ve heard me use that word before — I think those examples come back up,” Quinn said that summer. “The speed, the physicality, the effort, the straining — those are things that are Commander-style plays.”

Owens did it again as a gunner against the Dallas Cowboys and Detroit Lions last season while continuing to refine the details of his role, including his footwork on his releases and entry angles to the ball.

Izzo said the team expected “another big jump” from Owens this year, which he delivered days later when he ran over the Eagles and into viral fame.

“That’s the mark of a good gunner when they’re trying to vise you,” Quinn said Monday. “So it was one of the proudest plays for me of him, though. He’s a guy whose speed and strain is always there, but to see that one come together, it was just awesome. … It was one of my favorite plays in a long time on special teams, for sure.”

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