Grantland: All Work and No Play for JJ Watt
Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 8:24 pm
Long article, but excellent read. This man is truly a beast. Seems like his life is basically a never ending self-imposed boot camp. What a psycho.
http://grantland.com/features/j-j-watt- ... l-preview/
My favorite quotes from the article:
http://grantland.com/features/j-j-watt- ... l-preview/
My favorite quotes from the article:
- "When it comes down to that moment," Watt says, "when it's me against you, you know in your head whether you worked hard enough. You can try to lie to yourself. You can try to tell yourself that you put in the time. But you know -- and so do I."
...
The first time Charlie Partridge, Watt's defensive line coach at Wisconsin, met him, he had only one thought: That's a very, very serious young man. At times, the approach makes relating to his peers a struggle. His longtime trainer, Brad Arnett, tells a story about when Watt and a few Badgers teammates were working out at NX Level. The others were talking about a bar in Madison, one of those spots so established it might as well be a stop at freshman orientation. When they asked Watt what he thought of the place, he didn't have an answer. He'd never been. How, they kept asking, is that possible? "You want to know how?" Watt snapped back. "I was too busy becoming a first-round pick."
...
Houston was bad enough to land the no. 1 pick, which it spent on Jadeveon Clowney. Despite its need at quarterback, people saw pairing Clowney -- considered a rare pass-rushing talent -- with Watt as a way to build one of the most frightening defensive fronts in memory.
"I haven't really thought about it at all," Watt says of his new teammate. "What I told him when he got drafted was, 'Listen, I don't care what people have said about you before. I don't care about what you're going to do. I'm basing everything I see on what I see with my own two eyes: how hard you work, how much you study. I'm going to be an open book.'
"Now, I can't make anybody learn. I can't make a guy work hard. I can't make him come in and do extra work. But if he wants it, I'm here."
