Return by Watt an amazing feat
Why is J.J. Watt playing this week?
Because he can.
The risks he admits he is taking in coming back two months after a surgery that typically takes twice as long to recover from are worth it to him. He said, in fact, that the decision wasn’t even difficult.
Watt would risk his body for the team. For the playoffs. For the chance at a championship run.
Most athletes would. Charlie Brewer, the Baylor quarterback who left the Big 12 Championship Game with a concussion, was injured in the Sugar Bowl against Georgia on Wednesday night.
“It’s scary when they were holding his head and stabilizing his neck and he’s yelling at them to let go of him and let him go back in the game,” Baylor coach Matt Rhule said after the game.
Amazing, and insane, what athletes will do to play.
Watt will wear a brace to limit his arm movement in hopes of preventing a recurrence of a torn pectoral and to protect the recently damaged muscle. He says he could play every snap if he had to (or were allowed to), but the Texans have a plan for how he will be used.
Were this the end of the regular season and the Texans eliminated from the playoff race, Watt would not be on the field this weekend against the Bills.
But he recognizes these are
limited opportunities — Watt hasn’t been on the field for a playoff win in seven years — and he believes in this team.
“With the talent that we have in that locker room and the guys that we have, you have to take advantage of your opportunities,” Watt said. “I think that throughout practice, throughout this week and then taking it over to game day on Saturday, that’s our mentality, and that’s our goal: Take every single day, every meeting, every practice, every rep as serious and as focused as you can, because it’s that important. It’s the playoffs.”
Watt returned an interception for a touchdown in his postseason debut in January 2012 and got to the quarterback for a sack in each of his first four playoff games. But when the Texans beat Oakland in a 2016 playoff game, Watt was out for the season after back surgery.
He hasn’t had a sack in a playoff game since being credited with a half-sack against Tom Brady seven years ago.
Like most of us, he figured the Texans were about to do something big the next season.
“My first year I think we were 10-6 and we went to the playoffs and won in the first round and then lost in the second,” Watt said. “Then the next year we were 12-4, went to the second round of the playoffs. So, I was like, ‘OK, it’s just a matter of time.’
“Then you get slapped in the face with a 2-14 (record in 2013), and you get humbled real quick. So you learn this league will humble you. It doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter how good you are, how good you think you are. This league will humble you.”
There are seven defensive ends on the just-announced NFL All-Time team. Watt should have been among them. He is an all-time great.
For nine seasons, Texans fans have had the thrill of watching one of the best ever. What you will see Saturday is nothing short of phenomenal.
Watt might not have a huge impact on the stat sheet — get the noise meters ready for when he does — but he will make a difference in this wild card game.
He already has, in a little more than a week of practice with the team. He makes that much impact as a leader.
Watt said he wants to re-create the magic from his rookie season, when the Texans won their first playoff game and the city started to believe anything was possible.
Eight years later, weary from multiple disappointments, many of those believers see the Texans as deceivers and underachievers.
You can feel it in the tailgate lots before most games. There used to be a measurable positive energy. Now, some of the best tailgating in the NFL serves up more Jack and cynicism than Jack and Coke.
Watt believes that now would be a good time to change that. Otherwise, he would not have come back after missing the last eight games.
When he went down with the torn pectoral muscle in the second quarter against Oakland in October, he thought he was done.
“Absolutely gutted that I won’t be able to finish the season with my guys and give the fans what they deserve,” Watt tweeted at the time.
But being Watt, a couple days after his surgery he started asking exactly what the shortest possible recovery time was and set his mind on achieving it.
Since then, I have been asked dozens of times whether Watt should hang up his helmet and cleats. Those questions came from people who don’t know Watt and what he is about.
My joking reply was that there was a better chance for Watt to come back this season than to not come back at all. It was meant to be outlandish, bordering on impossible.
With Watt, it seems anything and everything is possible.
Four months is often the listed recovery time for surgery on a torn pectoral muscle. Maybe Watt had a milder injury. Maybe he’s just superhuman.
I’ll take the latter.