T.J. Watt at Wisconsin: The Position Switch That Made an NFL Star

How T.J. Watt Went from Wisconsin Tight End to First-Round NFL Pick

The Kid from Pewaukee

Trent Jordan Watt was born October 11, 1994, in Pewaukee, Wisconsin — a town of about 13,000 people roughly 20 miles west of Milwaukee. His father, John, spent more than 25 years as a firefighter. His mother, Connie, worked as a vice president at an independent inspections company. Neither detail particularly explains what produced three NFL players from one household, but there it is.

T.J. attended Pewaukee High School, where the teams are called the Pirates. He didn’t just play football — he played everything. By his senior year he’d earned first-team all-conference honors at four different positions: defensive end, tight end, quarterback, and punter. He also competed in track and field, winning the 2013 Wisconsin state championship in the shot put. The school later retired his number.

When recruiting services got around to rating him, they landed on three stars. Rivals ranked him the ninth-best recruit in Wisconsin. ESPN had him as the 28th-best tight end in the country. Not a blue-chip prospect. Not a guy anyone was fighting over. He enrolled at Wisconsin in 2013 and started his college career catching passes, not chasing quarterbacks.

All Three Watts Wore Wisconsin Red

The older brother came first. J.J. Watt arrived in Madison in 2007 as a tight end himself, switched to defensive end, and by 2010 was first-team All-Big Ten. The Houston Texans took him 11th overall in 2011. He went on to win three NFL Defensive Player of the Year awards.

Derek, the middle brother, played fullback for the Badgers from 2012 to 2015. The San Diego Chargers selected him in the sixth round of the 2016 draft, the 198th overall pick. He and T.J. were college teammates for three years, then professional teammates with the Steelers from 2020 to 2022.

T.J. overlapped with Derek at Wisconsin from 2013 through 2015. Three brothers. Same small Wisconsin town. Same program. All three drafted by NFL teams. It’s genuinely unusual — and it didn’t happen by accident. When T.J. later talked about his drive to make the NFL, he pointed directly at J.J.: “He is just a phone call away. He has been through it at the highest level. To come from the little town of Pewaukee and make it to the NFL has always been an inspiration for me.”

Two Years of Watching from the Sideline

T.J. redshirted in 2013 — standard enough for a freshman who needs time to develop. Then his knee gave out. He missed the entire 2014 season. By the time fall camp opened in 2015, he hadn’t played in a real football game since October 2012, his senior year at Pewaukee. That’s nearly three years.

His outside linebackers coach, Tim Tibesar, said it plainly: “At that time, even though he was in his third fall at Wisconsin, it was kind of like having a freshman come in. You’re trying to teach him for the first time how to play outside linebacker in our system.”

Here’s what makes this more complicated — T.J. wasn’t even a linebacker yet in 2014. He was still listed as a tight end, still trying to make that work, still recovering from his knee. The position switch hadn’t happened.

The Conversation That Changed His Career

In July 2015, head coach Paul Chryst sat down with Watt and asked him to move to outside linebacker. Watt didn’t say yes immediately. He went home, talked to his family, and then did what a lot of 20-year-olds do when they need to make a decision: he went on YouTube. He watched Von Miller. He watched J.J. Watt.

“I fell in love with the mentality,” he said afterward. “Getting after the ball, making plays. I told coach Chryst, ‘Let’s do it.'”

Before spring practice that year, Chryst and his staff also moved Jack Cichy — who had won Defensive MVP honors in the 2014 Holiday Bowl with three sacks against USC — from outside linebacker to inside linebacker. That cleared a starting spot for Watt before he’d proven he deserved one. It was a calculated bet on a player who had barely played in three years.

The 2015 season was Watt getting his footing. He played in all 13 games as a reserve. His stats were modest: eight total tackles, 1.5 tackles for loss, three pass breakups. Wisconsin’s defense that year ranked first nationally in scoring defense, holding opponents to 13.7 points per game, so he was part of something that worked — even if he wasn’t leading it yet.

The 2016 Breakout: 11.5 Sacks in One Season

Four games into his junior year, T.J. Watt led the Big Ten in sacks. Four games.

After the Michigan State game — a 30-6 Wisconsin win — he had already recorded 2.5 sacks and 3.5 tackles for loss in a single afternoon. The Big Ten named him Defensive Player of the Week. So did the Walter Camp Foundation, giving him their National Defensive Player of the Week honor.

Against Michigan, he finished with 11 total tackles. Against Purdue, he picked off a pass and returned it for a defensive touchdown. By the end of the regular season he had led his team to a Big Ten Championship Game appearance against Penn State, where he logged 1.5 tackles for loss and a sack. Then came the Cotton Bowl against Western Michigan — a win, with four tackles and a sack.

The full season line: 63 total tackles, 15.5 tackles for loss, 11.5 sacks, multiple forced fumbles, an interception, and a defensive touchdown.

Sports Illustrated named him first-team All-American. The Associated Press gave him second-team. On November 29, 2016, the conference gave him first-team All-Big Ten. He also earned Academic All-Big Ten honors in both 2015 and 2016, having majored in retailing and consumer behavior.

What made the defense as a whole so difficult to handle that year was the combination of Watt and senior Vince Biegel on the opposite edge. As Tibesar noted, opposing offenses couldn’t slide their protection both ways. Wisconsin averaged nearly 3.0 sacks per game. Defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox compared the setup to what the Denver Broncos had done with Von Miller and DeMarcus Ware the prior season. That’s the level of company Watt was being placed in after less than two full seasons as a linebacker.

Leaving Madison a Year Early

On January 3, 2017, Watt posted on Twitter that he was skipping his senior season and entering the NFL Draft. He still had a full year of eligibility remaining. The decision was straightforward: he had already proven everything he needed to prove in college, and his draft stock was high enough that staying made little financial or competitive sense.

At the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis, he tested among the best linebackers in the class. Among linebackers, he finished second in the vertical jump and three-cone drill, tied for first in the broad jump alongside Jabrill Peppers, and tied for first in the short shuttle. He completed every drill.

At Wisconsin’s pro day, his position work was led by Pittsburgh Steelers linebackers coach Joey Porter and two outside linebackers coaches from the Panthers and Jets — Kevin Greene, a Hall of Fame pass rusher himself. Among the 65 team representatives and scouts who attended: Packers general manager Ted Thompson and Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin.

NFL Media’s Daniel Jeremiah had ranked Watt 34th overall before the Combine, projecting him as a player who “could develop into an outstanding 3-4 outside linebacker.” Most analysts had him going late in the first round or early in the second.

The Pittsburgh Steelers took him 30th overall, the fourth linebacker selected in the first round. He was the second outside linebacker off the board.

What the Wisconsin Years Built

In the NFL, Watt became the second-fastest player in league history to reach 100 career sacks, behind only Reggie White. In 2021 he recorded 22.5 sacks in a season, tying Michael Strahan’s single-season record set in 2001 (since surpassed by Myles Garrett in 2025). He won the NFL Defensive Player of the Year award that season. His jersey number — 90 — became one of the most recognizable in the AFC.

None of it traces back to a spectacular recruiting profile or a pedigree of being the nation’s top prospect. It traces back to a July meeting in Madison, a YouTube session featuring Von Miller, and a coaching staff that cleared a starting spot for a player who hadn’t played a real game in three years.

His 71 career college tackles came across 27 games. His 11.5 college sacks all came in one season. By pure volume, it’s a thin resume. What it demonstrates, though, is how fast a player with elite athleticism and genuine obsession can develop when pointed in the right direction.

Pewaukee to Madison to Pittsburgh. All three Watts made that trip. T.J. just took the strangest route.