Texans defensive star JJ Watt has missed most of the season due to a back injury that required surgery. In an article published on The Players Tribune, Watt opens up about how a staph infection last year nearly ended his career.
I thought he was joking at first. But then I could see in his face that he was serious and actually a bit panicked. As it turned out, he saved me in a big way. At the hospital, they immediately put me on three hours of the strongest antibiotic IVs. I went straight from the hospital to the team plane and we flew to Jacksonville. Once we landed, there were two more hours of antibiotics that night and two more the next morning before the game. The medicine had completely drained me, but I played — and we won.
I remember walking into the locker room after the game and just collapsing on the training table. My body was completely shot, with nothing left to give. As the trainers hooked me up to an IV, one of the guys walking past joked, “You alive?” Later that day on the flight back to Houston, one of the team doctors told me that if our trainer hadn’t recognized the problem so quickly, I could have lost my leg.
As Watt says, that was a scary situation. The rest of the article goes into more detail over the various injuries he suffered and Watt questions if he will ever return to form. Football is a violent game with a very high injury rate and staph infection is a very serious disease that is way too common.
We don’t know when Watt will be back or if he can return to form. The years he has played have been the best we have seen on the defensive side of the ball. As of now, Watt says the highs and lows are better than living life in the middle. If he suffers another injury or setback or struggles in retirement and older age like many NFL players do, I wonder if he’ll still think it was worth it.