Two historic rivals will meet on Thursday night when the Steelers come to Cleveland to face the Browns. The game will also feature a personal rivalry between pass rushers TJ 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 spoke to him as he joined him as a DPOY winner.
“No, he didn’t tell me anything,” Garrett said, via the Tribune Review. “He’ll have to apologize when I see him.”
Watt did not attend last year 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 never complained about the trophy at my house, and vice versa,” Garrett said. “He shouldn’t feel two ways about it going to me. We’re just going to play the game. I’m not playing against TJ, he’s not playing against me. We’re going to plan to go out and do what we have to do, win the game and dominate on defense. It’s up for grabs this year.
Watt was asked this week about Garrett and his response to not winning DPOY last year.
“I respect 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’m not competing directly against him. It’s our team against their team, and I just want the Pittsburgh Steelers to win. .”
Despite his record-breaking career, it seems that Watt is somewhat underrated. Last year, it seemed like Watt’s eye-popping numbers were minimized by those who evaluated advanced metrics like gain and pressure rates over sacks, tackles for loss, forced fumbles and fumble recoveries.
JJ Watt, Watt’s older brother and three-time DPOY winner, was asked earlier this year to evaluate some of the new analytics that appeared to replace the traditional ways of evaluating pass rushers.
“It’s a very fascinating time,” Watt told CBS Sports. “I think there are a lot of businesses out there that can make a lot of money trying to come up with things that seem extremely smart and try to give people information that they think is providing value that may or may not be.
“I think there are a lot of analyzes that are extremely useful and useful … The problems I have is when we go into classification players based on an analysis that a person came up with in an algorithm that someone came up with and then we put a number or note of it starts to be a slippery slope when you judge by those things.”
The elder Watt said he prefers more traditional statistics.
“As far as percentage wins and things like that versus traditional numbers, I mean, are we going to start giving out wins based on who should have won the most percentage of plays in that game? Are we going to start giving out the wins? Super Bowl to the team that has the highest percentage of time won all year?” he said. “A sack is a sack, a win that didn’t result in a sack isn’t a sack. You could lead the game 99% of the game, and lose that game in the last game. You lost, you are 0-1 in the column. In my opinion, I’m just a believer in sacks, TFLs, touchdowns. Those are the things we can quantify and justify.”
When it comes to TJ Watt, the veteran pass rusher is enjoying another DPOY caliber season. Despite facing more double teams, Watt 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.
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