In what should and hopefully will be the last installment of the 2023 DPOY award back and forth between Myles Garrett and T.J. Watt, a saga that resurfaced prior to and immediately after last Thursday’s Pittsburgh Steelers-Cleveland Browns game, J.J. Watt again made it clear he holds no grudge against Garrett.
Responding to comments from Browns insider Mary Kay Cabot, who said Garrett used the Watt brothers’ words as “fuel” for his three-sack performance against the Steelers, J.J. said he’s never doubted the player Garrett has proven to be.
“I’ve literally never said a single bad thing about the guy,” J.J. Watt said Wednesday during his weekly appearance on The Pat McAfee Show. “What happened?”
Here’s what happened. Cabot told a Browns podcast that Garrett was “hurt” by the Watt brothers during and after he was named 2023 Defensive Player of the Year. While neither J.J. nor T.J. said anything bad about Garrett, T.J. skipped the ceremony and sub-tweeted the results. J.J. routinely advocated for T.J. to win the award.
“That really stuck in Myles’ craw,” Cabot said. “It hurt him. J.J. Watt, his brother, kinda chimed in on that. Myles firmly believed that was his moment. They stole his thunder. T.J. stole his thunder.”
In Garrett’s mind, their focus on T.J. Watt losing instead of highlighting Garrett’s success was unfair. But J.J. said his praise of his younger brother was never a slight against anyone else up for the award.
“Find one negative comment I’ve ever said about the man,” Watt said Wednesday. “Please. I literally only speak positively about him.”
Watt was shown this tweet he shared last year showing all the stats T.J. outperformed Garrett in. Watt had more sacks, more sacks, pressures, and QB hits among several other statistics.
Despite the clear edge in those categories, Garrett took home the hardware. He received four more first-place votes and more points overall under the award’s relatively new scoring system that’s similar to the Heisman process, tallying up first-, second-, and third-place votes to produce a final score.
Now, Watt and Garrett each have a DPOY trophy on their mantle and are aiming for the second. Doing so would put them in an exclusive club of football’s elite defensive players like DT Aaron Donald, DEs Bruce Smith and Reggie Watt, and J.J. Watt himself.
“I’ve come on this show and praised [him] before,” J.J. Watt said of Garrett. “I’ve gone on CBS and praised him many times before. I’ve tweeted many positive things about him. The guy’s an unbelievable player. Have never once in my entire life said he’s not a phenomenal player.”
With his dominant Thursday night performance, Garrett might have leaped Watt for the award, though updated odds still show Watt ahead. If it’s a close race by season’s end, and it almost certainly will be, what Garrett did in Week 12 could serve as a tiebreaker. But Watt will have his chance to save face in two weeks when Pittsburgh plays host to Cleveland.
Clearly, this story has survived longer than it should have, and I recognize writing about it only drags it out even more. But Garrett and those who report on him have gotten to talk plenty over the past week. It’s only fair for the Watts’ side to be heard and make clear that they’ve given Garrett his flowers in the past and in the present.
