DK’s Daily Shot of Steelers: Where will T.J. Watt be?

DK’s Daily Shot of Steelers: Where will T.J. Watt be?

Oh, I’m finally going to talk about TJ Watt. It’s just not going to be what one might expect. Good morning to you. Good Thursday morning. I’m Dan Kvachovic of DK Pittsburgh Sports. This is Daily Shot of Steelers. It comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you’re into hockey and or baseball, I also offer daily shots of Penguins and Pirates. I hope you’ll check those out, too. TJ’s going to sign. There will be an extension. I’ve maintained this from the outset, never wavered on it over the months that have followed, and I have no intention of wavering no matter how this ends up playing out, including visibly at St. Vincent College. Meaning TJ’s there. He’s a hold in instead of a hold out. Kind of does his own drills off to the side the way he did once before, the way Maker Fitzpatrick did not all that long ago. And then the deal gets done. Because as Mike Tomlin put it better than anyone else, when you have two sides that are interested in the same outcome, you’ll find a way to get there. And they will find a way to get there. So, tune out the noise, tune out the clickbait, tune out the hot takes, and focus instead on where TJ is going to be when the games get going because this is a subject of real relevance to the coming season. And I’ll start here. Yes, of course, he’s still elite at age 30. His past two seasons have seen 30.5 sacks, 63 quarterback hits, and 10 forced fumbles. That that that number alone is just mindblowing. So, let’s not waste each other’s time here on whether or not he’s going to be worth what the Steelers can comfortably handle in their salary cap for however long that extension runs. When you have a TJ, you don’t let go of the TJ. However, it’s also worth underscoring here that as the Steelers fell apart down the final stretch, TJ’s game fell off as well. Was it because the offense couldn’t stay on the field? Was it the caliber of the opponents? Was it those three games in 11 days? Maybe it was all of that. Maybe it was none of that. But the bottom line is that over TJ’s final four games, including the playoff loss in Baltimore, he had seven total tackles. None of those were sacks. And yeah, I was there. I know there were other factors in addition to that. He did get hurt in Philadelphia and it looked in the moment like it was bad. It was impressive that he was able to bounce right back. He did get chipped, though not all the way double teamed far more often in those final four games. And he did, don’t forget this part, get grossly misused in that playoff game by being told to go crashing down on Derrick Henry, even when Henry didn’t have the ball. If you ever want to do a gimmick defense, don’t involve your best player in it. But all of that aside, regardless of how that season finished, regardless of how much he ends up getting paid, the Steelers as a whole need TJ to be at or close to his peak. So there should be lessons that get learned from those final few games. And among those lessons possibly is moving him about the defensive front. It’s come up. It’s been acknowledged by Mike Tomlin, by Omar Khan, by Terrell Austin, by TJ himself. It’s It’s on the table. It’s actually happened on rare occasions, so wouldn’t be completely new. And I’d be really surprised depending on how this contract scenario plays out from the timing standpoint, how much of training camp and/or preseason practices TJ ends up participating. And if they don’t attempt at least to do something, even if it’s just to keep the opponents guessing a little bit more often. If you want me to be honest here, though, I I don’t I don’t think it’ll stick. And I’m not sure that it’ll need to stick. And my reasons for this really don’t have a whole heck of a lot to do with TJ himself. If we’re getting real here, a couple of things are true. One is that we as Pittsburgers have become really lazy in analyzing this team’s defense. And I’m pretty comfortable including most people into that. I’m sure it’s not all of them. So soon as something doesn’t go right for the defense, we all run back to Old Faithful. And that’s why isn’t TJ just taking the football away from everybody? Or I haven’t heard TJ’s name called in like 10 or 15 minutes as if that’s the expected norm for an edge rusher in the NFL. The other factor is, and I don’t think anybody really enjoyed acknowledging this, certainly not on the inside, but this defense had been expected for some time now to be able to get after the quarterback in different ways, including from the defensive interior, and it hadn’t been. Cam Hayward has been tremendous and he had a wonderful year. Deserved to be all pro. But as we’ve established many times over in recent years, Cam can’t get that job done alone. Cam can’t afford to be doing everybody’s job, including the ones who are supposed to get back to the quarterback, and still do his own job. Whereas, if Cam has legit help on that defensive line or he gets legit help from the I don’t know at least once a month blitz from somewhere, then sure, he can get back there and do some damage. But others have to do that. If all any team has to worry about in attacking the Steelers defense from a pass protection standpoint is where’s 90 and how do we stop him? They’re going to do it. It’s the equivalent of intentionally walking somebody in baseball. If you want to stop TJ, you can just have two people on him or even just chip him. He can’t hit a home run if he’s handed first base. But if you get what you want to get out of Derek Harmon, if you get what you want to get out of Keanu Benton, and you weren’t getting it this past season, if you get the kind of blitz action that maybe you can throw into the mix from Jaylen Ramsay or even one of the inside linebackers, they’re allowed to go after the quarterbacks, too, you know. Then what do you know? You’re not going to see as much attention to TJ and you’re going to see TJ being TJ right where he was when we come back. J1Q. This segment of Daily Shot is brought to you by our good friends at Mike’s Beer Bar. They’re located on Federal Street, directly across from PNC Park. Mike has more than 500 beers on tap, including from more than 50 local breweries. Stop in and say hello. Tell Mike we sent you. Mike’s Beer Bar. Today’s J1Q comes from Paul who says DK will Corless Weightman push Cameron Johnston to the starting punter’s job. Good time of year to tackle topics like this, by the way, before we get into training camp and all this stuff is going on and everyone tends to forget all about the the specialists and for that matter the entire special teams. Johnston, for anybody who doesn’t know, before he was hurt last year, signed a three-year $9 million contract, the fourth most in the National Football League for his position. So, that’s no joke. After several years of trying to get something out of Presley Harvin, somewhere between Mike Tomlin, Omar Khan, and Danny Smith, it was determined, you know, let’s just get serious here. Let’s just go and get one of the best punters around. And that’s what Johnston has been. The Steelers internally refer to him as having a special leg. And he does. I had a talk with him, brief, but fruitful, about his knee and his health and everything and how it’s holding up. And he just all smiles and everything. You can tell he’s a little bit weary of being asked about it, but that’s also part of being a professional athlete. He was a full go at the mini camp. He is expected to be a full go at the real training camp. And I had a brief talk with Weightman as well who it really can’t be stressed enough was outstanding. Not just as a replacement, not just as the emergency backup, he was just outstanding. So, I can attempt to portray some sort of camp duel or whatever here, but that’s not what this is. If Johnston’s healthy, he’s the guy, and he’ll be the guy next season as well through this contract. But I should also point out here that Weightman is signed through the coming season as well, and he’s not exactly cheap. His cap hit for the coming year is 1.1 million. Now, you’re not going to have two punters, but what you have here, and this is going to sound grim, but it’s part of what a GM has to do, you have insurance against one or the other getting hurt. And if neither of them do, and this is obviously what you would hope as a human, one stays, the other one gets cut, but the other one, whoever that is that gets cut, and let’s presume that it’s Weightman, he’s going to get snapped up like this. or or you could have a team lose a punter at some point through training camp or the preseason and that happens and they need somebody and you can make a little bit of a trade and bring yourself some kind of draft pick back. So, is there a competition? I mean, I guess you could say that, but even that would come into more of a health context than anything else. For example, if Johnston isn’t booming the ball to the moon and back, then you have a pretty good idea that he’s not healthy, in which case Weightman would be the guy that would be favored. But there’s nobody that’s expecting that. So, in all likelihood, and this is the way life is with a lot of these specialists in a lot of these camps, they’re in there, they’re happy for the opportunity to be punting or kicking in any capacity where there are video cameras and eyeballs on them so that they can get work somewhere around the National Football League. Both of these guys will be getting that kind of work this fall. I appreciate the question. I appreciate everybody listening to Daily Shot of Steelers. Remember, we’ve got a double shot coming up today at 4 PM Eastern on our YouTube channel, of course, on our app and website, DK Pittsburgh Sports. Hope to see you then.

Where will T.J. Watt be? (Besides being in Pittsburgh)

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