Stats show Steelers are simply a different team with T.J. Watt on the field

We know that T.J. Watt is a spectacular football player, but statistics show that his value to the Pittsburgh Steelers can’t be matched. 

Any random fan can tune into a Pittsburgh Steelers game and see the impact that T.J. Watt makes on the football field — it doesn’t take an analytics expert to figure that out. Whether he’s involved in the play or not, Watt does as much for his team as any individual defender in the NFL.

In fact, the data suggests that he might be one of the single-most important non-quarterback players in the National Football League right now. Since entering the NFL as a first-round pick back in 2017, we have sadly seen Watt miss 11 games completely. The results that Pittsburgh put up in his absence were embarrassing.

Over the past six years, the Pittsburgh Steelers are just 1-10 when Watt doesn’t play. This doesn’t even count the handful of contests in which he was forced to leave the field early due to injuries. In these 11 games without Watt, Pittsburgh’s defense has allowed 26.3 points per contest while recording just 1.45 sacks per game and a despicable low number of splash plays. Here’s my charting based on stats tracked by ESPN and StatMuse:

The difference between having Watt available or not is as clear as night and day. While the Steelers win an impressive 69 percent of the games they play when Watt suits up, that number plummets drastically to just a 9 percent win rate when he’s not available. This isn’t a small sample size either, as we are approaching nearly a full season’s worth of data without Watt on the team since he entered the league.

In addition, Pittsburgh has more than double the number of sacks and splash plays when Watt is playing than when he’s absent. Coincidence? I think not.

Why Steelers stats without Watt are convincing

Skeptics of Watt’s dire impact claim that these statistical discrepancies are the result of playing a much harder schedule when T.J. Watt is out However, that really couldn’t be further from the truth.

Recently, I broke down every game Watt has missed in his career and charted the offense and opposing quarterback they faced in his absence. The results might surprise you:

When Watt is missing from the field, the Steelers have lost to unspectacular quarterbacks like Mike Glennon, Baker Mayfield, Mac Jones, Jacoby Brissett, and Zach Wilson. Of this bunch, Jones is the only QB who hasn’t lost his starting job at some point in his career.

Though the Steelers played some formidable opponents with good quarterbacks as well, we can’t continue the narrative that Pittsburgh is only losing games without Watt because they only play good teams when he’s missing. This is a bald-faced lie.

Now, this isn’t to say that the Steelers would have won 69 percent of these 11 games if Watt would have played in all of them. But it’s naive to think that he doesn’t make a difference in some of these games against the Bears, Jets, Browns, or Patriots.

I do think that it’s important to point out that the Steelers don’t have a great backup behind Watt, which makes the drop in talent all the more significant. However, that shouldn’t take away from the impact that he so vividly has on the field.

The fact of the matter is that the Pittsburgh Steelers simply are not the same when T.J. Watt doesn’t play, and there’s data to back it up. Let’s hope the 2021 Defensive Player of the Year can stay healthy moving forward.