One of the big storylines coming out of Pittsburgh’s 24-10 loss to the Arizona Cardinals was OLB T.J. Watt’s frustration with not drawing holding penalties against him. He stated that the league must have something out for him after failing to get a call on a hold that caused Watt to injure his lower leg. Watt would later return to the game, but his displeasure with not being officiated fairly was clearly evident after the game.
Defensive coordinator Teryl Austin was asked about Watt and his lack of drawing holding penalties, to which Austin compared it to the great Shaquille O’Neal in the NBA getting hacked by opposing teams, opting to purposely foul him rather than allow him to score by the bucket.
“These guys are going to hold you til they can’t because a lot of times that’s the only way that they can block him,” Austin said via video from 93.7 The Fan’s X Page. “I share in his frustration, but I don’t think that there’s anything that we can do about it. We can complain and we can do all that, but that doesn’t really solve the problem. So I think we just deal with it. We continue to fight and go. It’s almost like the Hack-a-Shaq. People would hack Shaq all the time, and he got fouled so much, and everybody knew it was a foul, but after a while they didn’t call it because he was so doggone good.”
“So we just got to keep plugging away,” Austin said, according to Brooke Pryor’s X Page. “And when he has an opportunity to win, because he’ll still win, that he does that. I think as Mike [Tomlin] likes to call it, it’d be sport bitching, and we’re not going to bitch about our circumstances. We’re just going to play and fight through it, and T.J. will fight through it, and he’ll do it because a good pro and he’s a great player.”
“Hack-a-Shaq” was a basketball tactic meant to intentionally foul O’Neal to prevent him from scoring, opting to put him at the free-throw line rather than giving him the easy layup of slam dunk underneath the basket. Given that O’Neal was a poor free-throw shooter, the tactic was calculated to lower Shaq’s chances of scoring on a given possession, making him earn the points at the line rather than getting the automatic bucket less than two feet from the rim.
According to Sports Info Solutions, Watt has drawn six holding calls this year with one as a pass rusher and the other five coming as a run defender. Given the fact that Watt has played 713 defensive snaps this season, that means he’s drawing a holding call on less than one percent of his snaps (0.8%). That seems low for a pass rusher who is nearly unblockable, having that ability to single-handedly wreck games both as a pass rusher coming off the edge as well as a run defender making plays in the backfield. In fact, Watt has only drawn three pass-rush holding calls from 2021-2023, a ridiculously low number for a player who seemingly gets held numerous times a game without it getting called.
When you are the best at your craft, opponents will look to minimize your impact by any means necessary. For O’Neal, it was defenses purposely fouling him. Officials wouldn’t call the foul intentional, sending him to the line rather than properly penalizing teams for intentionally fouling him. In the case of Watt, it appears that the officiating crews are allowing more holding penalties to slide because he’s so good and that’s the only way offensive linemen can stop him.
It’s a true compliment to Watt and his prowess as a defender, but the NFL still needs to do something about Watt being treated fairly compared to the rest of the top tier pass rushers in the league. These no-holding calls not only impact his stats but also can affect his health as we saw on Sunday.
