The Pittsburgh Steelers have 32 franchise members in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. T.J. Watt is putting together a résumé that could allow him to join that fraternity someday.
But the premier pass rusher knows he’s missing something that many of those Steelers greats share: playoff success and, more notably, a Super Bowl ring.
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“Winning a Super Bowl is no doubt motivating me and winning a playoff game is absolutely motivating me,” Watt said in an episode of “In Depth with Graham Bensinger” that will air in its entirety this September.
“It’s something that we haven’t been able to do since I’ve been there. I think that’s absolutely unacceptable, and that is what’s attached to my name right now. I have to answer for that. As much as it sucks, when you say T.J. Watt, X, Y, Z, you also say, T.J. Watt, not won a playoff game.”
Watt agreed to a three-year, $123 million extension with Pittsburgh last week, making him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history for the second time in his six-time All-Pro career.
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A 2017 first-round pick of the Steelers, Watt has 108 career sacks. That’s 5.5 more than Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett and the sixth most among active NFL players. Watt won NFL Defensive Player of the Year during the 2021 campaign, in which he tied New York Giants Hall of Fame defensive end Michael Strahan’s single-season league record of 22.5 sacks.
Despite his laundry list of individual accomplishments, the 31-year-old Watt enters his ninth NFL season still in search of his first playoff victory.
“Oh, it genuinely bothers me because I’m a part of those teams,” Watt told Bensinger. “As much as I’m only one player, as much as whoever’s one player, you are putting your hand in the pile, too. I feel like I can make a difference enough to help win a playoff game and to have that to your legacy, especially when you play for an organization that has six Super Bowls … when ‘Mean’ Joe Greene comes back, it’s ‘Mean’ Joe Greene, two-time Defensive Player of the Year, I don’t even know how many Super Bowls he’s won. Jerome Bettis, one or two-time Super Bowl champion. It’s like T.J. Watt, ‘Yeah, great individual player, but what’s the team’s success?’ And that’s what really bothers me.”
Greene, an overpowering defensive tackle, won four Super Bowls with the Steelers during the franchise’s resurgent dynasty in the 1970s. Bettis, a barreling running back, helped Pittsburgh return to the top of the league and deliver longtime head coach Bill Cowher his elusive Lombardi Trophy at the end of the 2005 season.
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Watt’s quote, however, proves his point. It’s not the number of rings that matters as much as the fact that those players won a Super Bowl during their time with the Steelers.
Watt is hungry for one, too. He knows he needs to start with a playoff win, which Pittsburgh’s been deprived of since the 2016 season.
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