Hot Take Friday: MAXIMUM WATTAGE! TJ Overtakes JJ in 2019

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Maximum Wattage!!! 

JJ Watt, one of the best and most feared defensive players in the NFL; 5x Pro Bowler, 5x First-time All-Pro, 3x NFL Defensive Player of the Year, and 2x NFL sacks leader. He's also the Houston Texans all-time sack leader (92) and forced fumble leader (22). He's a beast and possible first-ballot Hall of Famer. How can you not love this guy?? He even won the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award in 2017...aka a certified good guy. Plus this hilarious mic'd up video he did https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTf-Q2hqJKk

Anyway, that's a very very impressive list of accomplishments and JJ only 30, so if you weren't questioning the headline before, you're definitely questioning now. And that's why it's a hot take (how clever am I?)! We do believe TJ Watt is in a prime position to overtake his brother in this upcoming 2019-2020 season.

First off,  TJ, while a pass-rusher like JJ, plays a more versatile position at OLB; asking him to not only rush the QB but cover receivers. This means for every pass play, he isn't automatically rushing. According to Pro Football Focus he's pretty busy in pass coverage:

While he's being asked to drop into coverage so often, it's easy to think his sack numbers are being diminished. This may be true and I'd like to see him go after the pretty boy QB's more often too but TJ still had 10.5 sacks last season giving him 20 in his first 2 years, for reference JJ had 36.5 (with a monster 20.5 in his 2nd year) and we're fully confident TJ can reach at least 16.5 this season. Since he'll get 4 or 5 against the Patriots in week 1, should be no sweat for the other 15 games.

Pass-rushers have become the 2nd most valuable position in the NFL as they're paid to harass the most valuable QB's, TJ cemented himself as elite-level status in that category last season. But he's also the Steelers' most productive run-stopper per PPF:

The man is a jack of all trades! And he's clearly getting better after each game!

According to PPF! Sorry to spam/shamelessly plug this account (feel free to sponsor us whenever), but my timeline is essentially spammed by them too. But it's okay because look at that good-good high quality content.

I didn't look up JJ's grades, I assume they're really damn good. But a saying in sports is the 'best ability of an athlete is their availability' and JJ played just 8 games in 2016 and 2017. He did recover for a full 2018 season, however he is 30 and has just a couple more seasons in his prime before becoming a pass-rush specialist. Meanwhile TJ is a few years away from his prime. In fact it was a joke for a few weeks in 2018 that they're identical:

All three Watt brothers, including Derek, play such a physical-style game and play with so much heart that they're bound to hit someone so hard they hurt themselves. We love watching all three of them play and have noting but the utmost respect for all of them. It's awesome to hear they workout together, constantly text each other, and are best friends. JJ is a great player who will go down as an all-time great if he can stay healthy these next few years and TJ is well on his way. The Steelers defense ask TJ to be a swiss army knife for the defense and he's excelled at that job in his first two seasons; we predict he'll eclipse that 16.5 sack benchmark in 2019 and finally start to leap ahead of his big brother.

-Ryan, TGYK