Steelers Throwback Thursday: T.J. Watt impresses at the 2017 NFL Combine
Steel City Underground presents “Steelers Throwback Thursday” featuring plays and stories from past seasons which you may have forgotten about! Now we’re “bringing them back!”
The 2020 NFL Scouting Combine is in the books and teams are starting to put the final touches on their draft board as the 2020 NFL Draft is about a month and a half away. Let’s take a look back at the current Pittsburgh Steelers’ Defensive MVP’s NFL Combine from 2017, T.J. Watt.
Watt was a three-star tight end coming from Pewaukee, Wisconsin as he committed to the Wisconsin Badgers. He took a redshirt year in his first academic year on campus in 2013 before suffering a knee injury at the beginning of his redshirt freshman year in 2014. As he was recovering and his redshirt sophomore year in 2015 was about to get underway, head coach Paul Chryst asked T.J. to convert from a tight end to a linebacker position. In his first year at his new position, Watt was part of a No. 1 scoring defense before breaking out in his redshirt junior season.
It was only his second season on the field but Watt broke out as a linebacker on the Badgers defense. During the 2016 NCAA season, he earned various first or second All-American honors, consensus first-team All-Big Ten, Lott IMPACT trophy quarterfinalist, Walter Camp National Defensive Player of the Week on September 25th, and was an Academic All-Big Ten student-athlete.
It was only his second season playing a defensive position, and Watt was earning national spotlight attention and decided to forego his senior year and enter the 2017 NFL Draft.
One of the biggest storylines for Watt as he was entering the professional NFL scene was his comparison to his three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year brother, J.J. Watt; now they both played the same position, edge rusher. T.J. entered the combine as an edge rusher and had an impressive outing in Indianapolis.
Out of the linebackers, Watt finished second in both the vertical jump and the three-cone drill. He also tied for first in the broad jump with Jabrill Peppers and tied for first in the short shuttle with Ben Gedeon.
He also fared well against his brother’s measurables (when J.J. was in the 2011 NFL combine). Out of nine categories the two both participated in, T.J. beat his brother in five categories (40-yard dash, 40-yard speed, 10-yard split, broad jump, and three-cone drill) and tied J.J. in two more (20-yard split and the vertical leap). There were only two drills in which J.J. beat T.J. outright: the 20-yard shuttle (short shuttle) and the bench press. NFLcombineresults.com gave J.J. a combine score of 91, while giving T.J. a score of 59.
There were many fans that did not like where the Pittsburgh Steelers drafted Watt but after three more years of playing at his new position and switching sides, T.J. Watt is now a player to watch out for each year in the NFL Defensive Player of the Year discussion.
