J.J. Watt got attention last weekend when he said that “I’ll be there” if Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans told him that the team “absolutely needs” him to return to active duty as a player and he revisited those comments during an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show on Wednesday.
Watt, who last played for the Cardinals in 2022, said the response to what he said makes him think people didn’t fully understand “how much stuff would have to happen for that scenario to play itself out.” Watt said that the Texans have “no need or use” for him right now and that it would have to be a “dire situation” for them to be in a position for him to get back into uniform.
Watt said he feels confident that he’d be able to play again in such a scenario, although he noted that he’d have to at least consider the possibility that he wouldn’t be able to reach the same level.
“The only thing you’d ever come back for now is if the exact right situation happened where you have a chance to do something you have never done before,” Watt said. “That’s the only scenario that could ever bring you out because you also have to look at the opposite side of that and all the bad shit that could happen.”
Watt won every individual accolade a defensive lineman could hope to win during his career, but never won or played in a Super Bowl so one could reasonably guess that those are the kinds of things he’s talking about. Whether that would be a possible outcome for a Texans team in a “dire situation” is hard to tell in May, but it does provide some more context to thoughts about seeing No. 99 in action again.
