T.J. Watt has done a lot of things in the NFL. He’s led the league in sacks. Tied the single-season sack record. Won a Defensive Player of the Year trophy.
One thing he hasn’t done? Win a playoff game.
That’s not his fault, of course. But in his seventh NFL season, he’s 0-3 in the postseason. The Pittsburgh Steelers haven’t won in the playoffs since 2016, the year before Watt arrived, and the drought is getting harder to ignore. Despite Watt’s Hall-of-Fame track, the Steelers haven’t been able to do much with it come January. In Ray Fittipaldo’s latest Steelers chat for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, he says the team is squandering the best years of his career.
“They’re wasting his prime years with [the] subpar offenses they roll out year after year after year,” he said, responding to one comment over how Watt may never win a championship.
Watt played in his first postseason game in his rookie year. Pittsburgh lost a 45-42 shootout to the Jacksonville Jaguars, upset at home and spoiling a great regular season that saw them finish 13-3. After missing the playoffs the next two years, the Steelers returned for 2020. Again, they were heavy home favorites and again, lost in upset fashion to the Cleveland Browns, whose head coach was in a basement after testing positive for COVID. In 2021, Pittsburgh was quickly bounced by Kansas City, a predictable outcome but a loss just the same.
In all three games, the Steelers’ defense has allowed more than 40 points. And Watt hasn’t been particularly productive with just one sack over that span (though he did return a fumble for a touchdown against the Chiefs). Still, it doesn’t take away from the unbelievable career he’s had, already the franchise leader in sacks, and not giving him any playoff success is a disappointment. Similar can be said for DT Cam Heyward, who is just 1-6 in the postseason and hasn’t won a playoff game he participated in since 2015 (he was injured for 2016).
CB Joe Haden signed with the Steelers with the specific intent of a postseason win, something he didn’t do in Cleveland, only to never taste a playoff victory and see his former team beat the Steelers in the playoffs (Haden missed the game due to COVID).
Above any player is the history of the franchise. Since Chuck Noll took over in 1969, the Steelers simply don’t go this long without a playoff victory. With a postseason bid this year looking like a coin flip, Pittsburgh’s in danger of going seven straight seasons without one. And you have to wonder what it’ll take to break that streak. For starters, an offense capable of getting out of its own way, something it hasn’t done in years.
