Pittsburgh Steelers All-Pro outside linebacker T.J. Watt had a productive season in 2024, but he was really quiet down the stretch. Watt suffered a left low ankle sprain late in the team’s Week 15 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. He was active for the last three games and the Wild Card game, but he did not recorded a single sack and was not productive in each game.
It appears that the combination of Watt’s ankle and thumb injury significantly hindered his ability to rush the passer. The Steelers also did a poor job of scheming Watt for better matchups. Watt was chipped on the highest percentage of snaps of any player in the league this season. He did so while rushing 546 times as the Steelers’ left outside linebacker or defensive end and just eight times anywhere else.
Steelers All-Pro defensive tackle Cam Heyward defended Watt on his Not Just Football podcast earlier this week, as the 2021 NFL Defensive Player of the Year received a lot of flak for not showing up at the biggest moments of the year.
“T.J.’s not concerned with the stats. He’s concerned with winning. He’s a team player, and he’s only concerned with trying to win the game,” Heyward said. “A stat line doesn’t say a lot. You can get lost in the shuffle if you think just because of a stat line that it prevents a team from winning. T.J.’s been out there trying to grind it through. There are a lot of things we’ve got to improve on, and T.J. Watt’s not the problem. He’s part of the solution. Whatever the stat line or whatever it was over those last games, that’s not the reason why we lost the game.”
Watt, a six-time All-Pro and seven-time Pro Bowler, was essentially invisible in the Steelers’ playoff loss to the Baltimore Ravens. In terms of box score statistics, he recorded none. Pro Football Focus credited him with four hurries — and also with two missed tackles.
Watt also recorded no defensive statistics against the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 18. He did not have a sack or a quarterback hit in four straight games to close the 2024 season. The Steelers lost all of those games and they lost in the playoffs for the sixth consecutive game, with Watt going 0 for 4 in his career in the postseason.
“It’s tough to sit here, same time as last year, same time as it’s been in this scrum, same questions and I have the same answers,” Watt said during the team’s locker cleanout day on Monday.
“Obviously, I’m very frustrated with how things ended and that’s not just with the last game, that’s with the last month of football. It’s a collection of things and it starts with myself. I need to play better. We need to play better. It’s not one thing that needs to be fixed. It’s a lot of things. But it starts internally with myself. I need to play better in bigger moments. It’s gonna be a long offseason to have to sit with that.”
Heyward also shut down the narrative that the Steelers quit in last Saturday night’s Wild Card loss to Baltimore. He believes effort wasn’t the problem.
“You had guys like Patrick Queen fighting through illness. If they’re giving less than 100 percent, they’ve got to live with that, but from my perspective, there wasn’t anybody like that,” Heyward said on his Not Just Football podcast.
Alan Saunders contributed reporting from Pittsburgh.
