Entering Week Four of the 2023 season, the debate regarding the best defensive player in football currently continues to rage on.
Depending on what you value most, cases for the best player defensively can range from Cleveland’s Myles Garrett to Dallas’ Micah Parsons. Heck, even to San Francisco’s Nick Bosa, the reigning Defensive Player of the Year in the NFL.
For former Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback Ike Taylor, that debate regarding the best defensive player in football begins and ends with one T.J. Watt.
Appearing on his podcast “Bleav In Steelers” with co-host Mark Bergin, Taylor stated emphatically that there is nobody better than Watt defensively in the NFL.
Period.
“The grass is green, the sky is blue. Who are we even talking to? T.J. Watt; you already know. Don’t even fight it,” Taylor said in response to Bergin regarding best defensive player in the NFL, according to video via Bergin’s YouTube page. “Don’t even fight right now who’s the best defensive player in the league. It’s T.J. Watt. I know y’all want to talk about athleticism and so and so can do this and that, but this is what T.J. can do. He ain’t even playing every snap, and other than rush, he’s got to cover. Ain’t nobody better than that man..ain’t nobody better than T.J. Watt.”
Hard to argue with Taylor there.
Watt battled through injuries last season that saw him miss seven games while on Injured Reserve due to a partially torn pectoral muscle. Once Watt returned, he suffered a rib injury that limited him in the second half of the season and didn’t allow him to truly feel like himself until very late in the year.
Now though, he feels like himself and he’s playing at an elite level once again.
On Sunday Night Football, Watt had two sacks against Las Vegas quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo and generated six total pressures. That came just one week after he set the Steelers’ all-time franchise sacks record with a takedown of Cleveland’s Deshaun Watson on Monday Night Football in Week Two and later returned Alex Highsmith’s strip-sack fumble 16 yards for the eventual game-winning score.
Currently, Watt leads the NFL in sacks with 6.0 and is first in the league in pressures with 19.
As Taylor noted, Watt does everything defensively, whereas guys like Parsons, Garrett and Bosa don’t drop into coverage at times and don’t have the interception numbers that Watt has in his career. It’s not just rushing the passer either. Watt is an impactful run defender, too, and is doing it while playing less than 80% of the defensive snaps each week.
If he keeps up this pace, he’s going to shatter the NFL’s single-season sacks record of 22.5 that he currently shares with Michael Strahan. Should he do that, he’ll win his second NFL Defensive Player of the Year award in three seasons, pulling within one of his older brother J.J.
That would really put an end to any discussion about who the best defensive player in the NFL is today.
