When it comes to sports talk, debates over the greatest this and the greatest that simply come with the territory. It takes a truly transcendent talent to produce broad consensus in any given era, and those are few and far between.
All one needs to do is look at the current debate about edge rushers, a discussion that includes the two most recent Defensive Player of the Year Award winners, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ T.J. Watt and the San Francisco 49ers’ Nick Bosa. Also consistently in the running are the Dallas Cowboys’ Micah Parsons and the Cleveland Browns’ Myles Garrett.
It’s the two AFC North rivals who are most often compared, however, and Aditi Kinkhabwala, who has covered them both extensively, weighed in on the subject recently. Joining Adam Bittner on the Chipped Ham of Football podcast, she offered her own take on the perennial debate.
“I’ve said this to Myles Garrett’s face, I think Myles Garrett is a beast. I think that he was blessed with all sorts of genetic gifts”, she said. “I think that T.J. works in a way that is just insane, has a drive and a single-minded love for football that also is insane. I think where T.J. distinguishes himself from Myles, not to say that Myles can’t do this in the future, T.J. makes those plays that change the game and have an impact on the scoreboard”.
If it’s not pure traditional statistics, then this tends to be the central argument that Steelers fans make when countering claims that Garrett is the better player. While Garrett has made many great plays in his career and is certainly one of the best in the game, Watt’s highlight reel is a little more impactful, with more momentum-swinging, even game-sealing plays.
Kinkhabwala ran down one sequence of plays in the Browns’ most recent win against the Tennessee Titans, during which Garrett posted a career-high 3.5 sacks, noting that he did impact the game in that situation—only to contrast it against Watt’s impact.
“That’s not the same as forcing a fumble that leads to a touchdown by Alex Highsmith”, she said. “That’s not the same as scoring a touchdown yourself. T.J. has a knack for doing that, and T.J. has the ability to elevate everybody around him simply by virtue of his nature”.
Watt, of course, scored the game-winning touchdown in the second game of the year, against Garrett and the Browns, the first score of his career. He recorded a sack earlier in the game on his own, and he had three sacks in the season opener. He did not have one clear defining play this week, however.
“I want to see a defensive player who doesn’t only stop the run and make the tackle and get the sack, but also scores points, or helps his teammates score points”, Kinkhabwala concluded. “I want to see a defensive player who makes his teammates better than [they are]. Up until this point, we haven’t seen Myles do that in the same way that we’ve seen T.J. [do]”.
It should be noted that she also hastened to qualify all of her comments, not wanting to say that one player is better than the other. Yet she clearly stated certain personal preferences about what separates certain players and did so in Watt’s favor.
Personally, I find the debate somewhat exhausting. I think Garrett is every bit as talented as Watt and just as capable of delivering timely plays. Steelers fans like to underplay his ability to defend the run and make exaggerated claims about him “disappearing” during stretches. They would have a different viewpoint if he were in a Steelers uniform.
But I’m still taking Watt every day and twice on Sundays.
