JJ Watt Says Tyler Owens’ Punt Coverage Rep Is One of the Greatest Plays He’s Ever Seen
JJ Watt does not hand out compliments like this. So when he reposted a clip of a Washington Commanders gunner and called it one of the greatest football plays he has ever seen, people paid attention.
The play came in the first half of Washington’s game against Philadelphia on Sunday. Tyler Owens, covering a punt, beat three Eagles blockers and got downfield to tackle returner Britain Covey. Three blockers, one gunner, and no return.
Watt’s reaction: “Not just special teams. This is legitimately one of the greatest football plays I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t get much better than that right there. Every coach in America will be showing this rep to their team this week.”
Why This Rep Actually Deserves the Hype
Gunner is the most thankless job on an NFL roster. You line up alone on the outside, two guys immediately try to wall you off, and if you get free the returner usually calls a fair catch anyway. Nobody watches the punt team. Nobody tweets about the punt team.
Beating a double team as a gunner is hard. Beating three blockers and still arriving in time to make the tackle on the returner is something else entirely. That requires a release, a second release after the first one gets jammed, and then the closing speed to cover the ground you lost fighting through bodies.
Watt is right that coaches will show this on Monday. Not because it is flashy, but because it is the exact tape you use when a young player asks why effort matters on a down where nothing happens most of the time.
Who Tyler Owens Is
Owens is a safety who came into the league in 2024 as an undrafted free agent and has spent his entire career with Washington. He played college football at Texas and Texas Tech.
Undrafted safeties do not get on the field on defense in September. They get on the field on special teams, and they stay in the league by being unblockable there. Owens is doing exactly what his path requires and doing it well enough that one of the best defensive players of his generation stopped scrolling to say something about it.
That is the part worth sitting with. Owens is not a household name. He was not drafted. He is on the roster because of reps like this one, and Sunday he produced the single best version of the thing that keeps him employed.
Washington lost the game 24-22, which is the frustrating footnote here. A two-point margin in a game where your gunner produced a play that the entire league is talking about means the Commanders left something on the field elsewhere.
That happens. Special teams is a phase, not a full team, and one heroic coverage rep does not close a two-point gap on its own. But it does tell you something about how Washington is playing in the phases people usually ignore.
Owens will not get a Pro Bowl bid for this. He might not get a snap on defense this month. What he got instead was recognition from someone whose opinion carries real weight in NFL circles, plus a tape clip that is going to live in special teams meeting rooms for years.
For an undrafted player in year three, that is a pretty good Sunday.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.