Football, and sporting in general, is a wonderful thing. It has the potential to provide a great amount of entertainment, as well as an important distraction from our day-to-day lives. We’ve currently been deprived of that, but the hope is, at least concerning football, things will be up and running in time for the regular season in September.
Bigger than that, though, is humanity, and human connections. The most immediate social unit is the family—for most, the people you will live and die with from beginning to end, whether figuratively or literally, while others may come and go.
This has become an increasingly meaningful topic for the Watt family, which has three siblings in the NFL, two of whom are now on the same team after middle brother Derek Watt signed with the Pittsburgh Steelers this offseason, joining three-year veteran T.J. Watt.
“It’s so special”, T.J. said of the opportunity to have one of his brothers in the same city. “I have been alone in Pittsburgh with my girlfriend, Dani, in school. It will be so special to have holidays where I know I will have family in town. Just the little things that are going to be really special for us”.
For them, sure, but not for older brother J.J. Watt, who remains down south with the Houston Texans, the team that drafted him in 2011. Watt is the most accomplished of the three in the realm of sports, but that doesn’t mean he’s not envious of the opportunity his brothers share, which may have leaked out in a curious way.
“I looked at J.J. and said it sucks to be you right now because we are playing together again”, T.J. told Teresa Varley, whose service, by the way, is more critical at this time than ever in supplying us fans with reading material. “He is jealous. Very jealous. I caught him wearing a Steelers hat around the house. I have a screen shot of it on my phone but I won’t leak it to the media, I promised J.J.”.
Will we ever see J.J. Watt in a Steelers hat? Perhaps even a helmet? When Derek first joined the Steelers, he did talk about how special it would be for the entire family if at some point they could have all the brothers play together one day, an opportunity they never even had growing up, because J.J. was older.
If that should ever happen, though, it would surely come at the end of J.J.’s career, when he’s more or less exhausted the bulk of his earning potential and actively wants to pursue this opportunity to play with his brothers. it’s a nice thought, to be sure, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up of ever seeing it come to fruition.
