The star of Monday night's Texans-Jets game was unquestionably
J.J. Watt Jersey, Houston's defensive end. Against the Jets, Watt had six tackles, one sack, and three passes defended. Overall this season, he’s tallied 20 tackles, eight-and-a-half sacks, two fumble recoveries, and eight passes defended. Those first three stats suggest that he's a very good defensive player; the last one says he's a freak. He's a reminder that football innovates in the trenches, too.
Only two players in the league have more passes defended—aka, deflections—than Watt, and both of them are cornerbacks. In fact, Watt is the only defensive lineman to rank anywhere near the top of this particular leaderboard. He has more passes defended than coverage aces Aqib Talib, Cortland Finnegan, and Charles Woodson. Pass deflections can be a
J.J.Watt Red Jersey tricky stat. You'd expect the very best defensive backs to rank low on the list, as no one wants to throw to their side of the field. But what does it mean when a defensive end is tipping passes left and right?
Watt has been doing this sort of thing since college. In his two full seasons at Wisconsin, he batted away a total of 14 passes. (He also blocked three field goals and an extra point.) He has done this well enough and long enough that he has
J.J.Watt White Jersey developed his own signature celebration move—a little Dikembian finger wag directed at his opponents.
One of the balls that Watt tipped on Monday was intercepted. Likewise, in Week 1, Watt deflected two passes that ended up the arms of his teammates. This is what makes his ability so noteworthy. When a defensive back bats a pass away, he's usually running stride for stride with a wide receiver and manages to knock the ball harmlessly to the ground. But Watt's deflections tend to hang in the air, in plain view of the Texans' defensive backfield, just waiting to be
J.J.Watt Black Jersey snatched up.
Since 2002, only five defensive linemen have accumulated more than 10 passes defended in a single season. Calais Campbell, Kevin Williams, and Johnny Jolly have all gotten 10 in a season. Jared Allen had 11 passes defended in 2006 and 10 in 2007, and Greg Hardy came away with 11 last season. With eight passes defended this year, Watt is on
J.J.Watt 10th Anniversary Jersey pace to finish with 26, a mark that would have been tops in the league for any player last season.
Watt isn't any more athletic than those guys; nor is he, at 6-foot-5 and 295 pounds, all that much bigger. So how is he getting his hands on so many balls? For one, he, a position that is usually asked to do little more than soak up blockers in order to free up his
J.J.Watt 10th Anniversary Jersey for Elite Alternate Red team's linebackers to make tackles.
Scheme alone isn't enough to explain Watt's prowess as a pass defender. Many other defensive ends and defensive tackles have the same knack for deflecting passes that Watt does, but few make a conscious effort to deploy that talent. Instead of selling out
Men's Houston Texans J.J.Watt 10th Anniversary Elite Team Navy Jersey for the pass rush on every dropback, Watt often works himself into the passing lanes, almost like a ballhawking basketball defender.
Here is a play from the Texans' Week 1 game against the Jaguars:
