Despite missing seven games with injuries last season and two the season prior, Pittsburgh Steelers OLB T.J. Watt is still on a prolific sack pace. In fact, the 33rd Team’s Elliot Kalb predicts that Watt will surpass his brother J.J. to become the second-fastest player in NFL history to reach 100 sacks in Week 11 of the 2023 season.
“Pittsburgh Steelers pass rusher T.J. Watt needs 10.5 sacks in his first 13 games to surpass older brother J.J. Watt (87.5) for the second-most by a player in his first 100 games since 1982 (when sacks became an official statistic). T.J. Watt has 77.5 sacks in 87 NFL games,” Kalb writes. “It’s not unreasonable to expect T.J. Watt to average one sack per game. I guess he’ll have 10.5 sacks in his 10th game. That means on Nov. 19 at Cleveland in Week 11, T.J. will surpass J.J. for the most sacks in their first 100 games.”
It would be a cool moment for T.J. to surpass his brother, but it would also be pretty sweet if the record game against the Cleveland Browns. Not only are they a division rival, but the tiresome discourse about Myles Garrett vs. Watt would swing another point in Watt’s favor. The results speak for themselves, and Watt’s been much better and put up better numbers than Garrett, so it shouldn’t still be a discussion. So, Watt setting the record in Cleveland would be sweet.
But it’s also pretty incredible that despite missing 12 games in his career, including a chunk last season, that Watt still has a very good chance to surpass J.J. for the record. Reggie White’s 105 sacks in 100 games is nearly impossible to top in the modern NFL, but J.J. Watt is probably the best pass rusher in recent NFL history, at least until T.J. came along and tied the single-season sack record with 22.5 in 2021. They’re both exceedingly talented, and the fact that J.J. holds the record and T.J. is threatening says a lot about their respective abilities.
The Steelers would love if T.J. t could get a sack a game. He opened last season off with a bang, with six tackles, an interception, a sack and two passes defensed, and it wouldn’t be a shock to see him have a few multi-sack games along the way this year. He isn’t facing the most impressive crop of offensive tackles this season, and T.J. could feast en route to breaking J.J.’s record and potentially having another 20-plus sack season.
It’s going to be fun to watch T.J. work at full strength this season. Hopefully, he’ll continue cooking up sacks and being an anchor on this Steelers defense.
