WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.V. — On Wednesday, in
a joint practice session against the Patriots, J.J. Watt lined up at left defensive end, across from Patriots tackle Marcus Cannon, a rising 335-pound building block for the New England line. Tom Brady took the snap. Now, in most of these joint practices, there’s no blitzing, no motion, and little stunting—it’s just man-on-man. And with the Patriots and Texans set to play in Week 3, you won’t see either team trying out many tricks. For the defense, it’s basically bull-rush football.
Watt low-leveraged into Cannon and pushed him back a couple of straining steps with brute force. Cannon prevented Brady from taking a hit, but on this play and many others over two days, the Texans, and Watt, saw everything they needed to see against prime competition. Watt’s surgically repaired back held up, and he is playing with no residual pain after disc surgery that KO’d his 2016 season. The man who won the NFL defensive player of the year award at 23, 25 and 26 before sitting his age-27 season believes he can pick up where he left off at 28. As does his coach.
“I can tell you right now the guy’s going to be at the top of his game,” Bill O’Brien told me. “He’s had a great training camp. I think he’ll be better than he was.”
Whoa.
When I told Watt what O’Brien said, he seemed genuinely happy—not just in a cliché sense. “I appreciate that, I appreciate it very much,” Watt said. “Obviously coming from him, it means a ton because he has seen every practice. He’s been out here, he’s been watching the film, he’s seen the practices, he knows what’s been going on. I haven’t talked too much about it. Everybody always asks, ‘Hey, how are you going to be? What is this season going to be like for you?’ And I don’t talk too much about it because the thing I have been focused most on this year is letting my play do the talking in practice. It’s been fun, I’ll say that. I feel very good.”
Remember that Watt won his third defensive award in 2015 when he was entirely healthy for maybe two weeks. It was September 2015 that a series of injuries—to his core, his groin and his back—began to accumulate through the season, and he and trainers had to scotch-tape the way through the season. It was still a 17.5-sack year, though it was often agonizing. He paid for that year with back surgery last fall, and the lost 2016.
“I feel like I am playing football the way I am supposed to play football, and I feel like I am the player I am supposed to be,” he said. “In the offseason, I transferred the tire-flipping and the 700-pound back squats into different exercises. Now I’m doing 14 different core exercises. It’s not any less time or less effort. It’s just different.”
“Do you honestly think you can be better than you were?” I asked.
If Pancakes can't even get the committee to make THAT guy a finalist after he helped revolutionize a position then what pull does he really have amongst his fellow voters? Go sell that somewhere else. Moon's #s speak for themselves. (Seriously though McClain isn't doing his job well enough)
