The All-Encompassing Watt Thread

J.R. · Apr 18, 2016

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The Pain of J.J. Watt

With his groin muscle tearing off the bone, the Houston pass rusher still turned in the best season by an NFL defensive player in 2015. The MMQB went to Wisconsin to check on Watt’s rehab and get his opinion on the NFL’s early retirement trend.

OCONOMOWOC, Wisc. — In J.J. Watt’s kitchen, in his luxury log-cabin getaway in the Wisconsin countryside, he has written one of his favorite sayings (he has a few of these) on a circular chalkboard. Watt sees it daily when he’s here, which is about four months a year. The three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year likes it so much he wears the words on a medallion around his neck.

Today I will do what others won’t
So tomorrow I can accomplish
What others can’t.

“Pretty sure it was Jerry Rice who said it,” Watt said. “It’s pretty significant.”

But after the nightmare of last season—a sports hernia injury, a significantly torn groin, a broken left hand and a herniated disc—the question is whether his body is telling Watt he’s pushed the limits too far.

Maybe a better question: “How does one win defensive player of the year with the groin muscle nearly fully detached from the bone?”

Or this: “How does one walk with the groin muscle nearly fully detached from the bone?”

Current events first. Watt is cutting back on his off-season workouts, if going from 10 workouts a week to nine qualifies as a reduction. He said he worked out twice a day five days a week last offseason; this year, he said he goes six days a week, with three of those two-a-days and three one workout per day. When he reports for the first day of the Texans’ offseason workouts today in Houston, he will be 14 weeks removed from the groin surgery.

“The thing I am working on right now is just my strength and getting it back to where it was—and beyond,” Watt said Thursday afternoon, walking his 36-acre property. “I can go forwards, I can go backwards, I can go side to side, but when I go to cut, that’s where I am still working to get back. It’s almost there. My explosion is getting there. I am very, very close to being back to 100 percent. But I never want to just get back to where I was, I want to build to be better than where I was.”

So, yeah. He’s really scaling back.

In the past four years, Watt has been the most dangerous defensive player in football. Of that there is little dispute. Playing all over the defensive line, he has a league-high 69 sacks. He’s proven he can win with speed outside, and power and speed inside. If you combine, per year, his sacks, quarterback pressure, quarterback hits and passes batted down—the stats, per Pro Football Focus, that really define the impact of a pass-rusher—2015 was his second-best season. The numbers are interesting, combining those four vital pass-affecting categories:

2012: 90.5.
2013: 90.5.
2014: 128.5.
2015: 96.5.

In 2012, 2014 and 2015, Watt was voted NFL Defensive Player of the Year. At 27, after five NFL seasons, he’s won the award three times. Lawrence Taylor, who played 13 seasons, won it three times.

Watt, in various and sometimes cryptic interviews in the past month, has hinted at the difficulty of what he accomplished last year, and at how long he’ll continue to play football. Last week, on a stroll on his placid acreage in southeastern Wisconsin, 40 minutes west of Milwaukee, he got specific about how tough his 2015 season was.

“I’m sure if the trainers had their way I probably wouldn’t have played,” Watt said, “but yeah, it was pretty bad. How did I do it originally? Well, there were five of them [tears], so each one kind of went on its own, as it just started to unravel as the season went on. I honestly don’t know when the first one happened. We tried to pinpoint it and figure it out, but as it went on, another went and another went and by the end it was just basically patchwork to try and make sure everything stayed together.

“It was very serious. Obviously it required a ton of reconstructive surgery. I was never not going to play in the playoff game [against Kansas City Jan. 9]. That would never happen. Obviously, they held me out late in the game. But I doubt I would have been able to play past that game. That’s when I tore the final one off the bone.

“I played because you have other muscles that compensate, you fight through some excruciating pain, you have very good doctors, and you just grind through it, that’s all. ... Because if I can physically step on the field and play, I’m going to. That’s just the way it is.”

The groin and sports hernia surgery was Jan. 12. Doctors told him the procedure should take an hour. But it took two-and-a-half.

“When I came out, I said, ‘How’d it go?’ And they were like, ‘It was much more than we thought it was going to be. There were more incisions than we thought there was going to be, there was more reconstructing than we thought there was going to be.’ But they fixed it all, and that was the main part. And obviously the recovery was going to be longer than we thought it was going to be. That’s just the way it goes, that was just a new obstacle. And for me, all the stuff happening was my body’s way of saying, Hey, maybe you need a chunk of time to rest your muscles and let them heal. So I took that time.”

On Sunday, I asked a surgeon with specialties in sports medicine, orthopedics and groin and sports hernia operations about Watt. Thomas Gill, a team physician with the Patriots from 1998 to 2014, made two things clear: Because he hadn’t examined Watt, he didn’t know the specifics of his case. And he said he had great respect for the Texans medical staff. He could comment only generally on a player playing with a significant groin and sports hernia injury.

“If he had the kind of significant groin injury, with the kind of surgery you’ve described,” Gill said, “absolutely you could try to get a player to play through that. But seldom would you ever see a player play at the level of a defensive player of the year under those conditions.”

It’s hard to tell anything looking at Watt now. He’s sculpted in the upper body the way he’s always been, his arms and shoulders the things of powerlifters. He doesn’t limp or grimace moving around his home, or walking quickly on his property on a brisk, sunny afternoon.

Watt’s the kind of person, though, who creates new obstacles when he can. It must get boring being the best at something four years running, and so he actually looks at this post-surgery period with some excitement. Look at the way he approaches his week-to-week life in the league. Last year, his groin barking and his sports hernia getting worse and having to overcome his broken hand, Watt finished the regular season with a three-sack game against Jacksonville. Then he aggravated the groin in the playoff game against Kansas City, and he was out.

He had to take five weeks after surgery with no physical activity. He didn’t waste it. He went to Dublin with 10 buddies and they traveled the city and the countryside. In the bar of his log cabin (if that’s a log cabin, then Fairfield Inns are Ritz-Carltons), he’s got some great souvenirs from the Guinness Brewery: Guinness glasses with “JJ WATT” etched on them. But when the five weeks were up, Watt was back in Wisconsin on his crazy workout routine.

“All this now,” he said, “what it did for me is it create a brand new mountain for me to climb. At the end of the season when you’re healthy you take a week and you start training again. So you’ve been at the top of the mountain, you go a little bit down, but not very far, and then you have to try to create a new mountain to climb. Well this time, I basically went all the way back to the bottom of the mountain. So it gave me a chance to build that fire back up in me to say, ‘Okay, now I get to re-climb this entire mountain and it’s exciting. It’s kind of like being a young guy again.’

“I’m sure I frustrate the trainers—in fact, I know I frustrate the trainers to no end. But I think there’s a very fine line. I listen to their advice. I take their medical expertise very seriously. But then I also, the reason I am where I am, the reason I play the way I play is because I push beyond normal. I push beyond what’s expected, I push beyond what people think is normal to do, so when a doctor tells me, You probably shouldn’t be doing this, or I should be doing it this many times, or I should be doing this much weight, I’m like, ‘I appreciate that. What are my risks?’ And then if it’s something I truly feel I can handle, I’m gonna push it as far as I can possible push it.”

Funny thing: The toughest game he had to play all year—in terms of the physical challenge—was a midseason game at Jacksonville. He caught some kind of virus that made him feeble. “I had been in the hospital the day before the game, and then the night before the game, I had the doctors in the room giving me two hours of an antibiotic IV,” he said. “We don’t really know what I had. On game day at 6 a.m. they came to give me two more hours of IV and then after the game I got more IV. That was the most draining game I have ever been a part of.”

Watt, in recent weeks, has said he doesn’t know how much longer he’s going to play. Some have taken that to mean he might play only two or three more years. That’s true … but he also might play eight or nine.

“I have no idea when it’s going to be, when I’ll retire,” he said. “I’m not saying it’s not going to be two, three, four years. But I’m also not saying it’s going to be nine, 10, 11 years. I literally do not know the answer. What I do know is I’m going to continue to train my ass off. I’m going to continue to work to be the best player in the world, and whenever that doesn’t sound fun to me anymore, that’s when it’s over.”

Watt is not exactly matter-of-fact when he talks about all this. But it’s routine. To him, there’s nothing really extraordinary about a person trying everything possible to do the best job he can.

There was one other thing I wanted to know: how he felt about players leaving this violent game before their time, rightfully concerned about the long-term effects of head trauma on their lives. Has he thought of it?

“So,” he said, after thinking about how he wanted to say this, “I respect every guy that has walked away. I think every single guy in this league makes his own decision and that’s perfectly fine. The reason I respect that and the reason I think every guy has his own way of dealing with things, is because in my personal opinion, I know what I’m getting into. I know that I’m going out there and I know that I am going to get hit in the head, I know that’s part of football. That’s like a firefighter knowing he is going to go into a fire at some point. You know you are going to be put in danger’s way and you accept that risk and you do it.

“I choose to continue doing it. That’s my choice. If I wanted to walk away, I could.

“But I love the competition. I love everything that comes along with competing on a day-to-day basis. I love my team. And I love what the game does for not only myself, but helping to inspire millions of people. I’m not at that point [of leaving the game]. I can’t say that I will never get to that point but I know the risk going into it and I’m a grown man and I can make my own decisions. So I’m going to continue to play until I feel like that risk is too great. And maybe there is a difference because I am a single 27-year-old, as opposed to having a family and kids to think about. But I think it’s one of those situations where you understand the risk and then you use that information to make your own decision.

“So a guy like Chris Borland used that information to make the decision that he didn’t want to play. And that is absolutely great for him. I know the information and I continue to play. As long as you have the proper information and you use that, then you can make whatever decision you want. But I’m not one of those guys who’s out here, mad at the world because I am getting my head hit.

“Yeah, I play football, I’m going to get my head hit. That’s the way it goes. People love it.”

Such a complicated subject, with so many tentacles. But not really to J.J. Watt. As with everything else in football, to Watt, it comes down to effort. He still loves investing it, and it sounds like he’ll play as long as his investment pays off the way it has the past four seasons—good health willing.
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zeeshan2 · Apr 18, 2016

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2016/04/18/j-j-watt-doesnt-rule-out-retiring-after-two-or-three-more-years/

Expanding on cryptic remarks recently made on the radio regarding how long he’ll play, Watt has provided more cryptic remarks to Peter King of TheMMQB.com regarding how long Watt will play.

“I have no idea when it’s going to be, when I’ll retire,” Watt said. “I’m not saying it’s not going to be two, three, four years. But I’m also not saying it’s going to be nine, 10, 11 years. I literally do not know the answer. What I do know is I’m going to continue to train my ass off. I’m going to continue to work to be the best player in the world, and whenever that doesn’t sound fun to me anymore, that’s when it’s over.”

Watt also addressed how close he came to not being able to play in 2015, due to a series of groin injuries that resulted in the muscle being torn off the bone.

“It was very serious,” Watt said. “Obviously it required a ton of reconstructive surgery. I was never not going to play in the playoff game [versus the Chiefs]. That would never happen. Obviously, they held me out late in the game. But I doubt I would have been able to play past that game. That’s when I tore the final one off the bone.”

Watt said there were five tears in all, and that the quintet of injuries “started to unravel as the season went on.” He nevertheless kept going.

“I played because you have other muscles that compensate, you fight through some excruciating pain, you have very good doctors, and you just grind through it, that’s all,” Watt said. “Because if I can physically step on the field and play, I’m going to. That’s just the way it is.
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Joe Fan · Apr 18, 2016

zeeshan2 · Apr 18, 2016

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I love Houston.</p>— JJ Watt (@JJWatt) <a href="https://twitter.com/JJWatt/status/721828592569585664">April 17, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The rain and flooding did not stop J.J. Watt from showing up to NRG Stadium. (via snapchat) <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Texans?src=hash">#Texans</a> <a href="https://t.co/5NETa0tpr1">pic.twitter.com/5NETa0tpr1</a></p>— PDS (@PatDStat) <a href="https://twitter.com/PatDStat/status/722116734006657024">April 18, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

zeeshan2 · Apr 18, 2016

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Stop making stories out of non-stories. A bunch of guys made it to work today, not just me. I'm not retiring. I'm single. Anything else?</p>— JJ Watt (@JJWatt) <a href="https://twitter.com/JJWatt/status/722163815899475968">April 18, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Nimo · Apr 18, 2016

zeeshan2 said: ↑

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Stop making stories out of non-stories. A bunch of guys made it to work today, not just me. I'm not retiring. I'm single. Anything else?</p>— JJ Watt (@JJWatt) <a href="https://twitter.com/JJWatt/status/722163815899475968">April 18, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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But did the other guys that showed up at work post it on twitter?

Juxtaposed Jolt · Apr 18, 2016

Nimo said: ↑

But did the other guys that showed up at work post it on twitter?
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That's not Watt's account. Not even sure why a random picture of a door = people showing up to work, but ok.

J.R. · Apr 18, 2016

Announced that first day of workouts cancelled because of the weather
Watt not only shows up but posts to social media.

SOCIAL MEDIA/ATTENTION HOAR!

:grin:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Law Enforcement: It's dangerous today. We are spread thin. Please stay home if you can. <br><br>JJ Watt: Sun's out. Guns out.</p>— chaps (@UncleChaps) <a href="https://twitter.com/UncleChaps/status/722127844290134016">April 18, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">"Flood the gym, I'll build an ark" - JJ Watt</p>— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) <a href="https://twitter.com/AlbertBreer/status/722124750198280193">April 18, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Give It A ****ing Rest, J.J. Watt

Nimo · Apr 18, 2016

Juxtaposed Jolt said: ↑

That's not Watt's account. Not even sure why a random picture of a door = people showing up to work, but ok.
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Yes it was Watt's account. It was just reposted by PatD originally on JJ's snapchat.

MystikArkitect · Apr 19, 2016

JJ is crossing over into insufferable. Even for a Texan fan. Just go work out man...

ItsMyFault · Apr 19, 2016

MystikArkitect said: ↑

JJ is crossing over into insufferable. Even for a Texan fan. Just go work out man...
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He should take some notes from Arian and just shutdown his twitter for a while.

The Hunted · Apr 19, 2016

He should take notes from JJ Watt and get 20 sacks and win Defensive Player of the Year.

Two Sandwiches · Apr 19, 2016

I'm not sick of Watt at all.

The same people that are "fatigued" by Watt, will be the first clamoring for him in ten years when he's retired, rich, and living the good like in the wilderness of Wisconsin in a lean to log cabin, wearing his plaid shirt and challenging moose to headbutting contests.

Houstunna · Apr 19, 2016

Watt probably should've saved that tweet.

Many people are suffering, right now.

ths balla · Apr 19, 2016

it was his snapchat people my goodness, you know an account that is supposed to give fans an inside view of what he does on a daily basis...Reporters screenshot the image, then tried to turn it into a story, its so sad

DonkeyMagic · Apr 19, 2016

Bring it on Watt. Meanwhile these losers are reposting links to "how to make a perfect steak in 10 minutes" on their social media

RunninRaven · Apr 19, 2016

zeeshan2 said: ↑

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Stop making stories out of non-stories. A bunch of guys made it to work today, not just me. I'm not retiring. I'm single. Anything else?</p>— JJ Watt (@JJWatt) <a href="https://twitter.com/JJWatt/status/722163815899475968">April 18, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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I heard that the reason his groin tore last season is because that's where he stores his HGH.

JJ, this accusation demands a response!

jbasket · Apr 19, 2016

Oh noes! A generational defensive player is getting on some people's nerves off the field! How could things get any worse???

Scolandry · Apr 19, 2016

If his off-field stuff gets on your nerves you must be one sensitive person. Its not like you have to follow his personal life, just tune in for his professional life when the camps, pre-season and season start.

Nimo · Apr 19, 2016

You all do know that it is possible to hate one aspect of what a person does and totally love another aspect? We can love Kobe Bryant on the court and hate him off the court. We can love James Harden and hate his party lifestyle. Just like I can love Jeremy Lin off the court and not like his game. Criticism of his social media activity has nothing to do with his on-field play. Lawrence Taylor is widely regarded as the greatest defensive player to have played the game, does that mean we can't criticize his off-the-field drug use and sexual criminal allegations? It's okay if you are fine with everything JJ Watt does, but don't act like others can't be critical of other parts of his life because of how awesome he is on the field.

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