Cut to a month from now if I’m wrong and have egg on my face.

The Pittsburgh Steelers and star edge rusher T.J. Watt are in the midst of a contract dispute, as the former Defensive Player of the Year and the team are reportedly far apart on guaranteed money and the length of those guarantees. This, of course, has brought out trade rumors, projected trade packages – the whole shebang that always takes place when a star and his team are in contract negotiations.

So, let’s get this out of the way – the Steelers aren’t trading T.J. Watt.

If we were still in January, fresh off the loss to the Ravens in the wild card round, and you wanted to speculate on a potential trade or trades the Steelers would make regarding veterans, that would have made sense, and plenty of people did – myself included. Tearing things down to the beams to gear up for a rebuild was a plausible idea, but one the Steelers never embraced. If they were going to trade Watt, they would have done it at the beginning of the new league year for a nice package of draft picks.

In addition, they wouldn’t have made all the moves they’ve made if they were going to cap off the offseason by trading Watt. Trading for DK Metcalf, signing Aaron Rodgers, trading for Jalen Ramsey, trading for Jonnu Smith – those aren’t moves a team makes if they plan on trading their best player less than three weeks before training camp.

We’ve seen this exact situation with Watt play out before. He and the Steelers will agree to a deal, and they’ll go forward with this “All in” 2025 season. Is it impossible to see them trading Watt, potentially, in 2026 or 2027? No. However, I will comfortably say there is as close to a zero percent chance as you can get of the Steelers trading him this season. Happy Fourth of July.