J.J. Watt suffered what the Houston Texans labeled a groin injury during a playoff loss to the Kansas City Chiefs back in January, but that classification may have been putting it lightly.
Tania Ganguli of ESPN.com reports that Watt had five partially or fully torn muscles in his core area by the time his season ended. He needed surgeries on both sides of his body to repair partially torn right and left abdominal muscles, a partially torn right adductor longus, a fully torn left adductor longus and a fully torn left adductor pectineus.
Translation: Ouch.
Some of the injuries reportedly occurred earlier in the season, so it sounds like Houston’s game against the Chiefs was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Watt also revealed in a radio interview this week that he had a herniated disk at one point. And let’s not forget about the broken hand he played through late in the year.
You can see a video of the play where Watt was injured against Kansas City here.
Despite being incredibly banged up, Watt recorded 17.5 sacks, batted down nine passes and won his third NFL Defensive Player of the Year award. Imagine what he could have done if he was more healthy?
