Texans Reportedly Have a Plan for DE J.J. Watt for Return in Playoff Game

J.J. Watt will make his return to the football field on Saturday when the Houston Texans take on the Buffalo Bills in the wild-card round of the NFL playoffs. He missed most of the regular season due to a pectoral injury but the team announced last month that Watt would be taken off injured reserve and be active for Saturday’s game. Texans defensive coordinator Romeo Crenel spoke to reporters about Watt and he revealed their plan for the three-time Defensive Player of the Year.

“Well, he’s a pretty good pass rusher, so I would like to get some pass-rushing reps out of him,” he said per NFL.com. “So, you’re looking at third down, two minute and then we’ll see after that.

“I think that we’ll have to kind of measure to see where he is and how he’s doing, because he hasn’t played in eight games. Even though he’s been working with the strength and conditioning people, the football condition when you’re playing a big game, your adrenaline gets picked up and you get winded a little bit faster. We’ll have to measure that to see how that goes, and then I think that will impact how much he plays. But I don’t think that we want to expose him too much if he’s not able to go at a good level.”

Because Watt has missed more than two months of action. He won’t get a ton of reps on Saturday. However, he’s confident he can make a difference when he’s out on the field.

“I think we have a good plan,” Watt said. “I think we have a good plan for how we’re going to utilize the game and how we’re going to go throughout the game. I think today was a good day for me. Today was my first day in pads. We were in pads out there on the field and it was good. I went through a lot of tests that I wanted to go through personally. Just mentally, when you’re coming back from — you’ve got to go through some tests mentally to make sure that you can do the things you want to do, and today was a really good day for that. I felt really good out there, did a whole bunch of different stuff to try and simulate what’s going to happen in the game and felt very good in all of those things. So, very pleased with where it’s at.”

Watt played in eight games this season and recorded four sacks. In his career, the Wisconsin alum has registered 96 sacks which ranks 41st all-time.