Houston Texans: Why J.J. Watt’s Top 100 ranking was just right

With all of the negative news coming out the Houston Texans offices as of late, it’s good to see a little positive emanate for once.

I’m sure the Houston Texans were wanting deflect as much attention as possible away from a doping and sexual misconduct scandal that was starting to gain steam on the media fronts.  But the franchise did what they do best for negative news — they squashed it like an annoying bug.  The players involved — Max Bullough and Keith Mumphery are now cut and are free agents as they didn’t get claimed off waivers.

To replace their roster spots, the Houston Texans signed linebacker Sio Moore and wide receiver Dres Anderson to fill their spots but it remains to be seen what their impact will be.  We know that Moore will likely make the greater of the two considering his solid skill set of defending the run but Anderson still is still a bit rough around the edges.

So there’s that…

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the NFL Network is doing their annual countdown of the Top 100 players for the upcoming season.  Jadeveon Clowney was honored last week with the 49th ranking, his first time in this prestigious category.

But our MVP, none other than J.J. Watt, was officially announced yesterday as a top player so where did he rank?  He’s 35th, 14th slots away from Clowney and 32 slots down from his previous No. 3 ranking in 2016.

Watt, in his usual, modest but earnest tone responded to the announcement with this:

The fact that he feels that he shouldn’t be ranked at all is a testament on how hard he is on himself and that’s admirable in every sense.  We all should be that way but the ranking is well-deserved and just right.  Why?  We don’t exactly how Watt will responded to the daily grind of an NFL schedule after all of the surgeries he has had.

The J.J Watt as we’ve all come to known may be a bit abbreviated but still one hell of a player that we’ll get to see each and every game.  With the uncertainty about this health, the NFL Network experts definitely had move his ranking down a few pegs.  It’s not saying that he isn’t top-notch but they have to give respect to other players that were around to put the work in last season.  So hence the reasoning for the lower ranking.

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I’m sure Watt will be fine and these rankings mean nothing to him.  He cares about winning and that’s what we’ll be doing when he’s out there on the football field, being a part of our likely No. 1 defense for 2017.

Just being able to see Clowney and Watt on the line together is going to be a real treat and I can’t wait for that opportunity as JD isn’t even into his prime yet.  We’ll have to see about this!

Go Texans.