Fresh off of a season in which he led the NFL in sacks for a record third time in his career with 19.0 on the season, Pittsburgh Steelers’ star outside linebacker T.J. Watt is poised for another big season in the Black and Gold.
He has the chip on his shoulder of being snubbed for yet another NFL Defensive Player of the Year award, losing out to Cleveland’s Myles Garrett despite having better numbers across the board.
Entering his age 30 season, Watt is on a Hall of Fame pace and should once again be one of the best pass rushers in football. But based on an ESPN projection from analytics guru Seth Walder, he might not be the best pass rusher on his own team, based on projected sacks.
In a piece for ESPN.com Saturday morning, Walder’s projected sack model, which is based on each player’s past performance and situation entering the 2024 season, projected Watt to finish with 10.3 sacks. That’s a relatively low number, considering his over/under on the season is set at 14.5.
But that 10.3 is projected below fifth-year outside linebacker Alex Highsmith, who is projected through the model to 11.2 sacks and finish the season with the fourth-most sacks in the NFL.
“We’re projecting a big jump for Highsmith (and I’ll get into the comparison between him and T.J. Watt shortly) after a down 2023 season,” Walder writes of Highsmith’s projection for ESPN.com. “That might seem odd, but the model finds plenty of signal in Highsmith’s 2022 performance when he broke out with 14.5 sacks. And while he fell to 7.0 sacks last season, his 21% pass rush win rate at edge ranked 12th at the position.
“I’m not surprised the model likes him, but I am surprised it likes him this much.”
Having Alex Highsmith projected to have more sacks than Watt, assuming both are healthy, seems like a slight stretch. But that’s a credit to just how good Highsmith has been.
As Walder points out, Highsmith saw his sacks drop from 14.5 in 2022 to just 7.0 in 2023, but his play didn’t decline at all. In fact, he got better.
Alex Highsmith generated 69 total pressures on the season, along with seven sacks, in 2023 after receiving his extension, putting together one of his most complete seasons.
He finished among the ten highest-graded edge defenders on the season from Pro Football Focus at 90.3 and did it all for the Steelers. He had two interceptions, including a pick-six, and added two forced fumbles.
Entering his fifth season, Alex Highsmith is a complete package who could really take off in 2024.
Then, there’s Watt.
Though the model is a bit lower on him than expected, Watt is projected to finish in the top 10 in sacks on the season once again and only finds himself behind Dallas’s Micah Parsons, Garrett, San Francisco’s Nick Bosa, Highsmith, New York’s Hassan Reddick (assuming he actually plays this season), and Las Vegas’s Maxx Crosby in the model.
“In four years of doing this, I’m not sure I’ve ever been as surprised by a player’s forecast as I am with Watt’s in 2024. The upside is obvious; in two of the past three seasons, Watt has accumulated at least 19 sacks (he tied the single-season record of 22.5 in 2021). He has also hit 13 or more in five of the past six seasons,” Walder writes of Watt’s surprising projection. “So why is he at just 10.3 this season, below teammate Alex Highsmith? The model seems skittish of Watt’s 2022 campaign when he suffered a variety of injuries and recorded 5.5 sacks — roughly a half-sack per game. Age is also a factor, as Watt turns 30 in October.
“Still, my opinion would override the model: He probably won’t hit, say, 15 sacks, but he should end up with more than Highsmith.”
Watt is truly one of the most dominant pass rushers in the NFL, bar none. He somehow continues to get better and better each and every season, which is rather remarkable when you think about it. He’s already an all-time great, but he continues to find another level in his game.
It’ll be hard to top what he did last season, but there is no reason to doubt Watt.
Watt is a superstar and had an incredible 2023 season, putting him closer and closer to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was healthy and on the field all season and dominated each and every week.
Watt had at least one sack in 13 of 17 games on the year. He was also a force against the run, adding an interception and scoring a defensive touchdown on a fumble return, helping the Steelers win an early-season game against the Cleveland Browns.
If he’s healthy again this season, which we have no reason to doubt that he will, Watt should be among the very best pass rushers in football again, easily surpassing the 15 sacks that Walder believes he’ll hit, regardless of the model.
Combined, Watt and Highsmith are the best projected pass-rush duo, too, which isn’t all that surprising either. They edge out Garrett and Za’Darius Smith in Cleveland and Parsons and Osa Odighizuwa in Dallas.
