Twenty-six teams passed on Pittsburgh Steelers OLB T.J. Watt in the 2017 NFL Draft, in the absolute strictest since. The Steelers drafted him 30th overall, and 26 different teams chose other players ahead of him. But the team that stands out the most has always been the Dallas Cowboys, who drafted OLB Taco Charlton 28th. You could also argue the Green Bay Packers, who traded out of the 29th spot to move down.
Taco Charlton went on to have…a career, most recently playing for the UFL’s Birmingham Stallions. Watt is, meanwhile, a virtual lock for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He has a chance to become the second-fastest player to reach 100 sacks, and to do so against the Cowboys.
Ahead of Sunday night’s game in which Dallas visits the Steelers, owner Jerry Jones discussed passing on T.J. Watt. Appearing on 105.3 The Fan, he was asked if he still thinks about that decision and its implications over the past eight years.
“You know, I do, but I don’t”, he said. “There are so many players that are around the league that you could draft and have. And there’s an old adage. It’s not the ones that you don’t have, it’s the ones that you have that you need to worry about”.
In other words, Jones still thinks about passing on Watt, but tries not to.
Now, to Jones’ point, the Cowboys are doing pretty fine overall without the Steelers’ T.J. Watt. Not right now, because Micah Parsons is injured, and they just put DeMarcus Lawrence on the Reserve/Injured List. But on the whole, they managed to find their pass rushers, and Parsons is certainly among the elite.
“I look at players all the time, and when I see them playing well, I say, ‘Well, they’re playing up to how we had them evaluated’, for instance, or how they weren’t evaluated”, Jones added, which is a reflection every team will inevitably have, including the Steelers, about other players beyond Watt. “Either way. And of course, you know for every Watt, there’s 10 others that haven’t done as well that you could have drafted. And then there are the ones you draft, which is what counts”.
The Steelers are catching a break in this upcoming game, as the Cowboys shouldn’t have either Lawrence or Parsons. While the Steelers will have Watt, Alex Highsmith is expected to miss another game, Nick Herbig set to start again.
Earlier this month, former Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett revealed the obvious. Now a game analyst, he said somewhat off the cuff that Dallas should have drafted Watt ahead of the Steelers. That is no great revelation, because of course they should have, especially since they wound up with Taco Charlton.
Like his brother, T.J. Watt came out of school inexperienced at the position the Steelers drafted him to play. And I distinctly recall head coach Mike Tomlin calling him not raw, but inexperienced. He showed that as a rookie, and he has only continued to improve.
In 108 career games, Watt has 413 tackles with 99.5 sacks, 27 forced fumbles, and 7 interceptions. In other words, he is pretty good. He has led the league in sacks three times, the most any player has ever done so since it became an official statistic. We have long run out of superlatives to describe his play. Jerry Jones didn’t even try. He didn’t want to. He knows he missed, just like so many other teams did. But that’s the nature of the draft; after all, the Steelers drafted Jarvis Jones 17th overall.
