It's not often a player wins back-to-back team MVP awards for the Steelers. Doing it three years in a row? That had been unprecedented until Thursday.
T.J. Watt won his third-straight team MVP award, an honor voted on by his teammates, becoming the first player in the team's storied history to do so.
And Watt accomplished the feat despite missing two full games and parts of three others with injuries.
"It's been tough," Watt said Thursday while accepting the award. "I feel like I can really impact the game when I'm 100 percent healthy. I haven't really felt that way in a long time. At this point in the year, nobody is 100 percent healthy. I want to get as close to it as I can to let it fly on game day. It's definitely been frustrating at times, but I've been able to overcome the majority of it."
Watt has dealt with groin, knee and rib injuries this season, yet still found profound ways to affect the games in which he's played.
The Steelers are 8-5-1 in games in which he has started and 0-2 when he doesn't. Despite missing some time, Watt has recorded 21.5 sacks -- one behind the NFL record heading into Week 18 -- 20 tackles for a loss, 59 overall tackles, six pass defenses and four forced fumbles.
"He is a game changer and a game wrecker," said quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. "I've been a part of guys like that, Troy Polamalu, who can change a football game. It doesn't happen on defense that often. To be a literal game changer on defense is something completely special."
And Watt has gotten better in each of his seasons with the team, seeing his sack total go up in each of his five seasons, from 7 as a rookie to 13 to 14.5 to 15 and then this year's explosion.
His 71 sacks in his first five seasons puts him in elite company in NFL history. Only Reggie White (81) and Watt's older brother, J.J. Watt (74.5), have more sacks in their first five seasons in the league. Watt, who is coming off a four-sack game on Monday night against the Browns, will have a chance to not only surpass his brother, but his next sack will tie Michael Strahan's 2001 NFL record of 22.5 in a season.
The Steelers (8-7-1) play the Ravens (8-8) Sunday in Baltimore needing to win and have the Colts lose at Jacksonville to earn a spot in the AFC playoffs.
"It's really immeasurable," Mike Tomlin said of Watt's effect on the team's defense. "There's things like stats and boy, that tells a story, but there's things that the stats don't tell, his approach to business, his communication, his leadership. And it's not outward, vocal leadership, it's words of encouragement. He's a very technical teacher with his peers. He helps young guys guys grow and develop. I watched it with Derrek (Tuszka) first got here, the way he took him under his wing. It's those things that don't get highlighted enough."
Watt grew up watching his older brothers train and has taken some of that to the next level. His ability to not only watch film, but learn and digest what he's seeing are becoming legendary among his teammates.
He credits that with much of his success.
"I’m trying to find any way to get an edge," Watt said. "Every single guy is watching film. Every single guy is practicing hard and training hard. Really, there can only be one person who is watching film the most in the best most efficient way possible. There’s a difference between just clicking through plays and actually watching plays with a purpose."
Watt seems to have figured out that difference.
He's now the leading candidate for NFL Defensive Player of the Year -- an award for which he's been a finalist the previous two seasons -- and the Steelers made him the NFL's highest-paid defensive player prior to this season.
The hard work and time-consuming study has paid off for the 27-year-old.
"I only get once chance at this. You only get to play for so long," Watt said. "It’s very time consuming, but it would be different if I didn’t love to do it. I just want to be the best. It would be a lot tougher if the people around me were telling me to stop watching film and stuff like that."
Watt won the award this season despite some stiff competition from team rookie of the year Najee Harris, wide receiver Diontae Johnson, defensive tackle Cam Heyward and Roethlisberger.
Harris is fourth in the NFL in rushing, while Johnson, who was placed on the Reserve/COVID-19 List Thursday, has produced 100 receptions for over 1,100 yards. Heyward has nine sacks this season in addition to being the anchor of the team's depleted defensive line, while Roethlisberger has produced 3,400 passing yards and 21 touchdowns in 15 games.
Roethlisberger, who will play his final game Sunday against the Ravens, will have won the award just once in his 18-year career, that coming in 2009.
But he's hardly in select company there. Pro Football Hall of Fame members Joe Greene, Franco Harris, Mel Blount, Donnie Shell and Polamalu also only won the award once with the Steelers.
The only player with more Steelers MVP awards in team history is wide receiver Antonio Brown. He won the award in 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017. Hines Ward and Jerome Bettis also won it three times each, though Ward twice shared the award, once with nose tackle Casey Hampton and the other time with linebacker Joey Porter.