I know, it always seems foolish to discuss the Hall of Fame credentials of a player who could be around for at least another 10 years, and who’s playing the final season of his rookie contract right now. Since time travel still hasn’t been perfected, we can’t go forward and know what injuries J.J. Watt could have to fight through, or if his career will be derailed by a muscle rip.
Maybe I’m a damn fool then. Because even at the age of 25, calling Watt a likely Hall of Famer already feels so right.
Watt has 37.5 sacks through 49 career games. Bruce Smith is the all-time sack leader, and he had 40.5 at that point early in his career.
Of the 12 players in league history to record at least 130 sacks, seven are in the hall of fame, and one is still active (John Abraham). If Watt plays for another decade and to the age of 35 — which isn’t at all unreasonable — he’d be on pace to fall just shy of that mark at 121 sacks.
If we broaden our scope to look at pass rushers with 121 career sacks or more, nine of the 18 are enshrined in Canton. Watt’s current sack trajectory is favorable then and already an entry point, though that’s only where the conversation begins.
More high-volume quarterback hurt in his peak years will help to solidify Watt’s hall of fame credentials later on. Smith went for longevity, with 13 double-digit sack seasons. But he still had only two years with 15 or more. Michael Strahan was just inducted into the Hall of Fame, and he had three such seasons.
Watt has already logged one: when he flirted with the single-season sack record in 2011 (20.5) as only an NFL sophomore.
But often we can be guilty of judging the quality of a pass rusher purely by that one metric. And I include myself in that, because the urge is difficult to resist. A sack is the ultimate goal for a pass rusher every time the quarterback is looking downfield, and it does the most immediate and obvious damage to the offense. It results in not only a wasted and broken up play, but one that ended in negative yardage.
Watt does plenty of quarterback crumbling, and so much more. One game into his fourth season he already has 28 career passes defensed. In a word, that’s remarkable. Or let’s use another word: historic.
Back to that all-time sack leader list, and let’s scroll down through the top 10. Here are the passes defensed by each sack artist (sackist? Doubt that one will stick), starting at the top:
- Bruce Smith: 2
- Reggie White: 0
- Kevin Greene: 0
- Michael Strahan: 16
- Chris Doleman: 0
- Jason Taylor: 77
- John Randle: 0
- Richard Dent: 0
- John Abraham: 29
- Lawrence Taylor: 0
- Leslie O’Neal: 0
With ties the top 10 is actually a top 12. So between 12 of the best pass rushers in league history there are 124 passes defensed, 77 of which belong to one man.
Jason Taylor was also not normal, and was Watt-ish in his prime. If we remove him, Watt has more passes defensed than everyone aside from the also active Abraham, who he’s one behind. Say, did I mention Watt is only starting his fourth season? He’s that special and rare, which he reminded us of promptly in Week 1 with a sack, three tackles (two for a loss), a pass defensed, five quarterback hits, a blocked extra point, and a recovered fumble.
No matter how talented the player is, Hall of Fame chatter always feels absurd when the subject is a 25-year-old. But with Watt, that feeling might not last much longer.
