Last season, T.J. Watt became the AFC North’s all-time sack leader in divisional play. This week, he could become the first to reach 50 sacks against AFC North teams. Sitting at 48, he needs two to reach the mark, and he has two games on deck in a four-day span.
Watt and company host the Cleveland Browns today before traveling for a Thursday meeting with the Cincinnati Bengals. Considering he averages close to a sack per game against both opponents, I like his odds of hitting the mark.
In 14 career games against the Browns, T.J. Watt has recorded 17 sacks. Yet that comes with a caveat: he failed to notch a sack in two games against them in 2024. Incredibly, he only ever had one game in the regular season against the Browns in which he failed to record a sack.
Against the Bengals, Watt has been nearly as successful. He has faced them 15 times in his career and has come up with 14 sacks. Although he didn’t notch a sack in his last game, he passed Terrell Suggs in the first meeting in 2024 as the all-time AFC North sack leader. And he loves himself some divisional sacks.
With a two-sack performance against the Bengals in Week 13 in 2024, T.J. Watt recorded his 47th and 48th sacks against AFC North opponents. In doing so, he moved past Terrell Suggs, who has 46.5 career AFC North sacks. And the thing is, nobody else is even close. You might correctly guess that Myles Garrett is in third, but he is a distant third with 38 sacks.
It’s worth reminding that the AFC North is a “young” division, arising only in 2002 when the NFL shifted to four-division conferences. Since then, only five players have recorded at least 30 sacks within the division. Three of them are Steelers, with Cameron Heyward and James Harrison joining Watt.
As you might guess, players within the division stand the best chance of ranking high on the list. In my own informal research, the most successful non-divisional player is Dwight Freeney, who has 26 career sacks against AFC North opponents. Freeney, a Hall of Famer, was pretty good, registering 125.5 sacks in 2018 games. T.J. Watt is pretty good, too, though, with 111 sacks in 125 games.
And Watt has 48 of his 111 sacks against his AFC North opponents. In addition to his 17 against the Browns and 14 against the Bengals, he also has another 17 against the Ravens in 16 games. He holds the record for most regular-season sacks against the Ravens and is two away from tying the record against the Browns. Myles Garrett is one ahead of him for sacks against the Bengals—and Heyward is half a sack ahead.
