5 best Pittsburgh Steelers players through the first quarter of 2021 season
By Tommy Jaggi
2. Steelers EDGE T.J. Watt
It’s remarkable that T.J. Watt has still been the second-best player on this football team after dealing with a groin injury for most of the year. Watt was utterly unblockable against the Buffalo Bills in Week 1, as he racked up a pair of sacks to go with 5 quarterback hits and a few drawn holding calls.
Sadly, Week 1 has been the only healthy game Watt has played so far. Since then, he played just 16 defensive snaps against the Raiders in Week 2 before suffering a groin injury. He then missed the entire contest against the Bengals in Week 3 before playing through injuries against the Green Bay Packers last week.
Watt clearly wasn’t going at full strength in Week 4 and he was likely only playing because the Steelers knew how much their season was riding on the Packers game. When he gets back to full strength, I fully expect him to be the best player on this football team and one that can simply take over games with his dominant physical presence.
Watt is unarguably the single-most valuable asset this franchise has moving forward and we hope he will be back to full speed soon.