T.J. Watt Sends Clear Message To Steelers Defense Before Week 8 Game

T.J. Watt knows the Pittsburgh Steelers defense can’t afford to repeat their Week 7 performance when playing the Green Bay Packers on Sunday night.

After appearing on Thursday’s injury report as a limited participant, Watt was a full go on Friday. The superstar pass rusher has no injury designation entering a primetime game against Green Bay at Acrisure Stadium.

Pittsburgh’s defense must rebound from allowing 470 total yards in a 33-31 loss to Joe Flacco and the Bengals last week. Watt called for improvement on Friday, per Steelers.com’s Teresa Varley, and refused to blame the unit’s early struggles on a new-look group getting comfortable playing together.

“There’s no excuse,” Watt said. “We’re six, seven games in now at this point. We’ve been together since the summer, especially in the early training camp period. So, there’s no excuse. Us having new guys, every team has new guys, new additions. We just need to be on the same page.”

Watt also reiterated an imperative goal he and All-Pro teammate Cam Heyward stated after the Steelers allowed 147 rushing yards to the league’s worst running offense in Week 7.

“Stop the run, stop the run, stop the run,” Watt declared.

That’s not the only issue, as Watt wants to snap a short turnover drought and play more consistent football moving forward.

“Obviously, try to affect the passer as much as we possibly can,” Watt added. “I’m not happy with not getting takeaways two weeks in a row. I think there’s just a lot of things, guys doing their job individually and allowing us to play the best we possibly can collectively and getting back to what we do. It sucks going through this high, low, high, low, but we just got to get it figured out.”

The Steelers and Packers face off on “Sunday Night Football” at 8:20 p.m. ET on NBC.

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