5 best Pittsburgh Steelers players entering the early bye week
By Tommy Jaggi
1. T.J. Watt
If you even second-guessed who should be the top Steelers player on this list after the first three weeks of the season, I beg you to go back and put on the film. Not only is T.J. Watt outplaying every other person in black and gold this year, but there probably isn’t a defender in the NFL who is on his level at this point in time.
Pretty much everything backs this up: his raw statistics, PFF grade, and efficiency numbers. Despite recording just 1 tackle and 1 tackle for a loss in Week 1 against the New York Giants, Watt has managed to earn 3.5 sacks, 5 tackles for loss, 10 quarterback hits, 2 pass defenses, and an interception. This is with Watt being robbed of a missed strip-sack he had on Daniel Jones in Week 1 when the play was blown dead.
Watt is better than we could have ever expected him to be at this point, and he already has half as many quarterback hits as he did in his entire Pro Bowl season in 2018. He is the clear favorite for Defensive Player of the Year at this point.
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The Steelers have some other notable names like Bud Dupree and Cameron Heyward who fell just short of making the top five so far, but they have a chance to leapfrog a few of these players as the season goes on. I will be sure to update this list periodically throughout the 2020 season.