The Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals may not play each other much, but Arizona’s offensive coordinator knows them quite well. Drew Petzing was hired this offseason to that post after spending the past three seasons with the Cleveland Browns, so he’s coached against Pittsburgh’s defense quite a bit.
“I thought I got out of that division, and here we are again”, he said, half-jokingly, about having to go up against the Steelers and the rest of the AFC North. “I’ve played them seven times the last three years. It’s a really well-coached group. It’s the front seven and you can name the top three guys”.
In case you’re forgetting, it’s seven games because the Steelers and Browns faced each other in the 2020 postseason—a game that Petzing’s group won of course. At the time, he was tight ends coach, but moved to quarterbacks coach in 2022.
Suffice it to say, having had to coach guys who block him and guys who are hunted by him, he knows everything there is to know about T.J. Watt—except how to slow him down. Asked if he’s figured that out yet given all of his experience coaching against the future Hall of Famer, he said with a smile, “No. And when I do, I’ll let you know”.
You may already be aware of this, but Watt does tend to dominate specifically against the Browns. He has 17 career sacks against them in 12 games played, including eight over the past three seasons while Petzing was there. Shockingly, though, none of his 26 forced fumbles have ever come against the Browns.
“I think everyone has tried to find that answer. He’s as good as there is. He really is”, Petzing said about trying to find ways to slow Watt down. “He’s been the model of [consistency]. He’s been doing it his entire career since he stepped into the league. He’s dynamic in both phases, plays the game at such a high level”.
Watt’s own head coach just yesterday declared him “the best defensive player on the planet“, and if there is anybody about whom that’s not hyperbole, it might as well be him. Just take a look at this sack from Sunday below. “I see the lengths that people go through to minimize his impact on the game”, Tomlin said. “I know the type of games we’ve been in, close ball games, and how that at times minimizes a guy that plays his position’s ability to impact the game. None of those things slow down the train that we all know is coming”.
A 2017 first-round draft pick, Watt was seen as a possible bit of a project given his limited college experience. But he started right away and had developed into an All-Pro by his second season. The only thing that put a pause in his annual growth was a major injury last year, just one season after earning the Defensive Player of the Year Award while tying the NFL single-season sack record.
Eleven games into the 2023 season, he has a career-high 13.5 sacks by this point of a year, though that doesn’t actually put him on pace to surpass his own record of 22.5 sacks. If he were to continue on his current trajectory, he would end the year with 21 sacks with six games remaining. But two more is certainly doable.
It might not be a bad idea to rack them up against the Cardinals’ Kyler Murray, who has a career 6.3-percent sack rate. He’s been sacked nine times already this year on 116 drop backs that didn’t end in scrambles.
