Pittsburgh Steelers outside linebacker T.J. Watt has been quite the playmaker since arriving in the NFL and that is reinforced by the fact that the team’s former first round draft out of Wisconsin has 77.5 sacks, 23 forced fumbles, six interceptions and seven fumble recoveries in 87 regular season games played to date.
In fact, since 2018, Watt leads all players with 22 forced fumbles. With that obvious statement out of the way, today I wanted to look at the impact that any Watt-related turnover has had in games.
For starters, and according to Pro Football Reference, there have been 22 defensive plays by the Steelers that have included Watt registering one of a forced fumble, interception or fumble recovery that the end result was a takeaway. That equates to roughly one Watt-related defensive takeaway by the Steelers for every four games he has played in.
So, what about points produced by those Watt-related defensive takeaways? According to the stats on PFR, the Steelers have scored a total of 66 points off of Watt-related takeaways, which is essentially three points per each on average. Just eight Watt-related takeaways so far during his career have failed to produce some type of points. By the way, six of the Watt-related takeaways recorded so far during his career resulted in touchdowns. He’s played six NFL seasons so far so that’s an average of one per season when it comes to Watt-related takeaways.
Digging deeper, I wanted to find out the impact Watt-related takeaways had on the win-loss column and my findings were a little bit surprising.
In the 21 different games in which Watt had a hand in a defensive takeaway, the Steelers have a 14-7 record. Prior to digging for that win-loss stat, I would have bet that the Steelers winning percentage would have been a little bit more than 66.6%. These stats are what they are, however.
Circling this post back to Watt’s ability to force fumbles, only 11 of the 23 that he’s been responsible for have resulted in takeaways. That’s not even half. Sure, the bouncing of the football can be quite random, but I would have bet that the Steelers defense would have come away with more takeaways than 11 out of 23 chances produced by Watt.
Last season, Watt obviously missed seven games due to pectoral injury and the Steelers defense sure did miss him. In the ten games that he did play in, he only managed to be involved in two defensive takeaways and both were strangely interceptions in the two games against the Cincinnati Bengals. Watt also only registered one forced fumble in 2022 and that’s the first time he’s produced a total that low in that statistical category since his 2017 rookie season.
In closing, a fully healthy Watt in 2023 should result in the 2021 NFL Defensive Player of the Year having his hand in several takeaways for the defense. On the low side, probably four, but hopefully it’s at least double that or even more.
