Pittsburgh Steelers Exit Meeting: OLB T.J. Watt
Experience: 8 Years
Steelers OLB T.J. Watt is his own harshest critic, but that won’t stop others from trying. Coming off a very good season, the future Hall of Famer is under fire for not being routinely spectacular. Though he led the league with six forced fumbles, he “only” recorded 11.5 sacks. While he garnered All-Pro recognition, it was on the second team, falling behind two AFC North rivals.
Placing ahead of him were Myles Garrett and Trey Hendrickson, the latter leading the NFL in sacks. Hendrickson is the first player to lead the NFL in sacks not named T.J. Watt in a year in which Watt has been healthy since 2019. Watt recorded the most sacks in the league in 2020, 2021, and 2023, missing much of the 2022 season. His 11.5 sacks are the lowest in a healthy season since his rookie year in 2017.
Notably and uncharacteristically, Watt did not record any statistics in his final two games, including the playoffs. Ordinarily, he finds some way to make an impact, and often a significant one. A forced fumble, a timely tackle for loss, he often shows up at the right moment.
But there were more games than usual in 2024 in which T.J. Watt didn’t show up when needed. That left the Steelers star frustrated at the end of the year, wondering what he can do more. He agreed that he has to be more open to moving around the formation, at least. From his own observation, he felt teams were scheming to shut him out of games more than ever this past season. If that is indeed the case, their plan was successful.
Of course, you can only stop T.J. Watt for so long, and he still made plenty of plays for the Steelers. If Alex Highsmith put up his numbers, we would all be praising him. But T.J. Watt is T.J. Watt, and he lives by different standards.
Watt will turn 31 years old in 2025, and it’s fair to wonder what he has left. Is the Steelers star on the downswing of his career now, or is he still in his prime? We talk about his 2024 season like it was somehow bad, and it certainly wasn’t. But it was also not the T.J. Watt we are used to, and that has to trigger some level of concern.
The Pittsburgh Steelers find themselves at home, the inevitable result of another early playoff exit. This is a repeated pattern for the organization, with no clear end in sight. As the Steelers conduct their own exit meetings, we will go down the roster conducting our own. Who should stay, and who should go, and how? Who should expect a bigger role next season, and who might deserve a new contract? We’ll explore those questions and more in these articles, part of an annual series.
