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The Watt family knows how to produce football players. All three boys, J.J., T.J., and Derek, have made it to the NFL and have each enjoyed varying degrees of success. Of course, the most decorated is the eldest, J.J. Watt, who took the league by storm after he was selected by the Houston Texans in the first round of the 2011 NFL Draft. That said, T.J. Watt is gaining on him as he enters his sixth season in the league and is fresh off a 2021 campaign where he earned Defensive Player of the Year honors after tying the single-season sack record. 

Even with those accolades, however, T.J. doesn't think he's anywhere comparable to his brother quite yet. 

"I think I'm too early in my career to compare myself to him at the moment honestly," T.J. told The Pivot.

He also suggested that his brother's prime is currently being slept on in the football world and highlighted just how dominant he was when he first stepped into the league. 

"I do think that it's misconstrued. I want people to know how great my brother truly was in his prime," Watt said. "I think that it gets lost in today's -- and I know that he would be upset if I said this -- but I think it truly is. You go back and you look at it, you watch the film, the guy was fricking unstoppable. Like absolutely unstoppable. He'll never say it, but it's like ... I think people need to go back and look at that. The guy was doing incredible things for four or five years, and I still think that he can play at a high level." 

Watt does have a point. From 2012 to 2015, there was nobody better than his brother. Over that four-season stretch, he was named first-team All-Pro each year, won Defensive Player of the Year three times, led the NFL in sacks twice, and had two seasons of 20-plus sacks which made him the first player in NFL history to accomplish such a feat. 

In that time, he AVERAGED 17.3 sacks a year, 29.8 tackles for a loss, 47.5 quarterback hits, and 3.8 forced fumbles. Watt was also second in MVP voting in 2014 only losing out to Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, which is unheard of for a defensive player in today's NFL. 

Injuries started to derail that historic pace for Watt, but his brother's point remains that J.J.'s peak was arguably better than or as good as anyone's in NFL history.