Two historic rivals will face off Thursday night when the Steelers come to Cleveland to face the Browns. The game will also feature a personal rivalry between pass rushers T.J. Watt of the Steelers and Myles Garrett of the Browns.
Watt, the league’s 2021 Defensive Player of the Year, clearly wasn’t happy when he didn’t win the award again this past year. The award instead went to Garrett, who was asked Tuesday if Watt had spoken to him since he joined him as a DPOY winner.
“No, he didn’t say nothing to me,” Garrett said, via the Tribune-Review. “He’s going to have to apologize when I see him.”
Watt didn’t attend last year’s NFL Honors Show and posted a cryptic message on social media seconds after Garrett won the award. Watt was passed over despite leading the league with 19 sacks in addition to his four forced fumbles and three fumble recoveries. Garrett had 14 sacks, four forced fumbles and a fumble recovery.
“I’ve never complained about the trophy being at my house, and vice versa,” Garrett said. “He shouldn’t be feeling two ways about it going to me. We’re just going to play the game. I don’t play against T.J., he don’t play against me. We’ll plan to go out and do what we’re supposed to, win the game and dominate on defense. It’s up for grabs this year. We’ll see the best man win.”
Watt was asked this week about Garrett and his response to not winning DPOY last year.
“I have respect for everybody in this league,” said Watt, who earlier this year became the second-fastest player in NFL history to reach 100 career sacks. “Obviously, he’s a guy who’s been a top pass rusher in this league for a long time. But I don’t compete directly against him. It’s our team versus their team, and I just want the Pittsburgh Steelers to come out with a win.”
Despite his record-setting career, it does seem that Watt is somewhat underrated. Last year, it appeared that Watt’s gaudy numbers were minimized by those who valued advanced metrics like win and pressure rates over sacks, tackles for loss, forced fumbles and fumble recoveries.
JJ Watt, Watt’s older brother and a three-time DPOY winner, was asked earlier this year to assess some of the new analytics that have seemed to replace the traditional ways of evaluating pass rushers.
“It’s a very fascinating time,” Watt told CBS Sports. “I think that there are a lot of businesses out there who can make a lot of money by trying to come up with things that seem extremely smart and try and give people information that they think is providing value that may or may not be.
“I think there are a lot of analytics that are extremely beneficial and useful … The problems that I have are when we get into grading players based off of analysis that a person came up with in an algorithm that somebody came up with and then we’re putting a number or a grade off it. It starts to be a slippery slope when you judge off of those things.”
The elder Watt said he favors more traditional stats.
“As it comes to percentage win rates and things like that versus traditional numbers, I mean, are we going to start giving wins based on who should have won the most percentage of plays in that game? Are we going to start giving the Super Bowl to the team that has the highest percentage of time won throughout the year?” he said. “A sack is a sack, a win that didn’t result in a sack is not a sack. You could be leading the game 99% of the game, and lose that game on the last play. You lost, you’re 0-1 in the column. In my opinion, I’m just a believer in sacks, TFLs, touchdowns. Those are the things that we can quantify and justify.”
When it comes to T.J. Watt, the veteran pass rusher is enjoying another DPOY-caliber season. Despite facing more double teams, Watt has still recorded 7.5 sacks and a league-high four forced fumbles for the Steelers, who are 8-2 entering Thursday night’s game against Garrett’s Browns, who are one loss away from sealing their 22nd losing season since returning to the NFL in 1999.