JJ Watt is viewed as one of the hardest working players in the league and because of it, he has an absolutely impeccable reputation among fans. Is the dominant defensive end beginning to wear out his welcome with his dog and pony act?
In a Players Tribune article, he stated the many injuries he played through during the 2015 season and how hard it was on him. This is all well and good, but bringing them up so far after the fact seems a little braggadocios. While the news cycle isn’t pointed towards him everyday this season due to his season-ending injury like it was last season, this seems like an attempt to remain relevant.
Some of the excerpts seem a bit much. He approached a trainer about a rash on his leg and the trainer wanted to rush him immediately to a hospital out of fear of a staph infection.
I thought he was joking at first. But then I could see in his face that he was serious and actually a bit panicked. As it turned out, he saved me in a big way. At the hospital, they immediately put me on three hours of the strongest antibiotic IVs. I went straight from the hospital to the team plane and we flew to Jacksonville. Once we landed, there were two more hours of antibiotics that night and two more the next morning before the game. The medicine had completely drained me, but I played — and we won.
I remember walking into the locker room after the game and just collapsing on the training table. My body was completely shot, with nothing left to give. As the trainers hooked me up to an IV, one of the guys walking past joked, “You alive?” Later that day on the flight back to Houston, one of the team doctors told me that if our trainer hadn’t recognized the problem so quickly, I could have lost my leg.
It can’t be disputed how skilled Watt is, but what he definitely doesn’t need to do is pump his own tires. Let the media do that and not reveal that he battled so much and overcame adversity in such a way. It doesn’t come off as genuine and because of it, only damages what many think about the former Wisconsin Badger.
