The Pittsburgh Steelers have never experienced a playoff victory with T.J. Watt. Arguably the greatest defensive player of his generation, he doesn’t know what winning a playoff game is like. The Steelers reached the conference finals the year before they drafted him but cannot win with him.
Or rather, the Steelers have not been able to win with Watt up to this point. And that certainly isn’t because of him—just look at their record when he doesn’t play. But it’s an endless source of frustration, understandably, for a player who has achieved everything but team success.
“It’s tough. I’m sitting here the same time as last year. I’m in this same scrum being asked the same questions and I have the same answers”, Watt said during the Steelers’ cleanout day, via Ray Fittipaldo of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “We can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results”.
Watt reiterated that the Steelers need to have some tough conversations, and that the solutions start with himself. For his part, he said that he has to be more open to moving around the formation. He seems to be growing weary of teams scheming him out of games, especially as that coincides with losing them.
T.J. Watt is entering the final year of his contract. He is due $21,050,000 in base salary for this upcoming season but is also coming off one of his least effective seasons for the Steelers.
Discounting his rookie and injury-abbreviated 2022 season, Watt posted career or near-career lows throughout the stat sheet. Though he led the league with six forced fumbles, his 11.5 sacks were his lowest in a full, non-rookie season. He also had his fewest tackles for loss in a full season, matching last year, since 2018. And for only the second time in the last six years, he didn’t intercept a pass. In fact, this was his least-involved season in coverage of his career, barring one.
While he knows that he has to step up his own game, Watt knows the Steelers’ problems are many. He cited the failure to translate practice to game as a primary frustration, a common theme. For weeks, players have talked about having good practices and good plans that they didn’t execute in-game. How do the Steelers go about fixing that?
The collapse of the defense is something they need to take very seriously. Cameron Heyward and T.J. Watt, even Minkah Fitzpatrick, aren’t getting any younger. They have to evaluate who is part of the solution, and some have speculated they may benefit from trading Fitzpatrick.
Following another first-round exit, T.J. Watt is tired of the Steelers’ Groundhog Day. How do they change things up in order to change up the outcome? I don’t envy the task the organization has on its hands this offseason. But at the same time, it’s a task the Steelers put on their own plate, and it’s time to start eating.
