The Houston Texans have a quarterback who once led the league in passing yards, a running back who once led the league in rushing yards and a wideout who twice led the league in receiving yards. You could be forgiven, then, for crediting the team's 4-0 start to Matt Schaub, Arian Foster and Andre Johnson. While those men are playing well, however, the Texans' perfect record has mostly been driven by a dominant defense, and that defense has in turn been driven by J.J. Watt, a runaway leader for defensive player of the year one month into the season.
The Texans are second in the league in total defense, and first overall in scoring defense, giving up only 14.0 points per game. Football Outsiders' advanced stats paint a similar picture. Through four games, the Texans have the league's top defense overall, as well as the best defense against the pass. (Editor's note: As of Sunday night, Chicago actually outranks Houston in both overall defense and pass defense, but the Bears have played only three games.) Opponents are completing less than 53 percent of their passes against Houston, for only 6.0 yards per attempt, and have been sacked 13 times. The Texans rank in the top five in each of those categories.
Watt is, unquestionably, Houston's brightest star on that side of the ball. A first-round pick out of Wisconsin in 2011, Watt was a starter as soon as he signed his Texans contract. He totaled 5.5 sacks as a rookie while also effectively defending the run.
Our similarity scores system examined Watt's size and production and saw a younger version of Richard Seymour, the versatile lineman who excelled for the New England Patriots teams that won three Super Bowls earlier this century, and is still starting for Oakland a decade later.
Watt set the bar high as a rookie, but his sophomore campaign has been even better. He has at least 1.5 sacks in every game and leads the league with 7.5 quarterback takedowns. Only 10 men have ever collected so many sacks in the season's first four games; those 10 men finished with an average of 14 sacks, showing how hard it is to keep up this kind of production over 16 games.
Even when Watt isn't putting quarterbacks on the ground, though, he's often batting their passes out of the sky. Watt leads all front-seven players with five passes defensed. NaVorro Bowman and Philip Wheeler are the only other front-seven defenders with as many as four tipped passes, and both of those men are coverage linebackers (neither player has a sack this season), not front-line rushers.
And as impressive as all of that sounds, it's still not giving Watt enough respect. At FO, we credit defenders with a "defeat" for all plays that result in negative yardage, a turnover or a stop on third or fourth down. Put that all together, and Watt already has 17 defeats this season, which is far and away the most in the league. (Clay Matthews is in second place with 11.) Jared Allen led the league with 33 defeats in 2011; Watt is already halfway to that total after only four games. In the past 15 years, no defensive lineman has had more defeats in a season than Robert Porcher, who had 37 for the Detroit Lions in 1997. That record is now in serious jeopardy.
These numbers are all remarkable in a vacuum, but they're downright amazing when you consider Watt's role in the Texans' defense. Watt is not a 4-3 end like Allen, or a 3-4 linebacker like DeMarcus Ware. He's not a perimeter rusher. He plays defensive end in Wade Phillips' 3-4 scheme, and that means his first priority on almost every play is to occupy at least one blocker, theoretically clearing space for linebackers like Brian Cushing and Brooks Reed to make plays. Even when the Texans go to a four-man front in nickel and dime situations, Watt usually moves inside to tackle where he can get stuck in traffic, not outside to end where he can work in space. By design, Houston is making it as difficult as possible for Watt to avoid blockers. Watt is responding by taking on those blockers and beating them play after play.
While fantasy football is all about the so-called skill position players, real football games are still usually won and lost in the trenches. As long as Watt is on the field, the Texans won't lose very many battles on the front line.
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What a nightmare that could have been. So basically, at least 2 good things came from the 6-10 season. Watt and Wade! Let's hope they are together with the Texans for a long time.
