The life and times of J.J. Watt

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PEWAUKEE, Wis. - If you've never seen trees like this, you might wonder if they are on fire. On a crisp autumn day, the leaves are an explosion of bright orange, red and yellow. They flutter to the ground and look like paint spatters in this small town of about 8,000 that is 25 minutes from Milwaukee.

J.J. Watt's future is here, on a plot of land on a hill overlooking Pewaukee Lake and a small stretch of shops situated downtown.

This is where he wants to take his future wife - he hasn't met her yet - and where he wants to raise their kids. He wants to coach at the high school just down the street. He wants to build a big log cabin on that grassy hill and live the simple life that he loved as a child. They'll have dogs, maybe some horses, and they'll dock their boat on lake down from hill. He doesn't own the property yet, but he plans to.

When the roar of the life he now lives diminishes, Watt will return to the place that made him and the people who believed in him and his crazy dreams. Except his dreams don't seem so crazy anymore.

It was their belief in him that made him work hard. He'll tell you they are the reason he earned a scholarship to Wisconsin, became one of the program's most beloved players, turned into a first-round draft pick for the Houston Texans and is currently the best defensive player in the NFL.

Watt works every day to repay them and prove that he is worthy of their faith in him.

Texans defensive end J.J. Watt has no bigger fans in his hometown of Pewaukee, Wis., than Connie Watt (top photo), who displays a poster highlighting the college and professional play of her son, and his father John (left photo), who proudly flies a Texans flag in a community where football allegiances are dominated by the Pewaukee High School Pirates, the Wisconsin Badgers and the Green Bay Packers. less Texans defensive end J.J. Watt has no bigger fans in his hometown of Pewaukee, Wis., than Connie Watt (top photo), who displays a poster highlighting the college and professional play of her son, and his father ... more Photo: Smiley N. Pool Photo: Smiley N. Pool Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close The life and times of J.J. Watt 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Fact and fiction

There already is a myth circulating about Watt, who is 23 and in his second NFL season, and how made it to the NFL.

It goes like this:

Watt dropped out of Central Michigan, left behind a full scholarship and worked at a Pizza Hut in Pewaukee. There, he realized he wanted to be a football player and not a Pizza Hut delivery man. One day he delivered a pizza and a boy answered the door perplexed about why this football star was delivering his pizza. In his car, Watt cried and vowed to turn his life around.

That story is like a Taylor Swift song. Catchy, sweet and only loosely based on reality.

The truth is more complex but no less revealing. To understand it requires understanding his childhood.

"It was awesome," Watt said. "It was our backyard and then there were three backyards behind it. There were no trees or anything, so it was pretty much just one big backyard. So we would have football games across the length of three yards."

He could run over to his best friend Kyle's house, knock on his patio door and ask if Kyle could come out and play. Watt, his middle brother Derek and their youngest brother T.J. all played together with the neighborhood kids as their mother Connie watched out the kitchen window.

Back then, Watt idolized the Pewaukee High School quarterback.

"I thought the high school quarterback was greater than Brett Favre, greater than any player who ever lived," Watt said. "I thought he was the coolest man in the entire world."

In fourth grade, he told Mrs. Keefe, his teacher, "I want to be a Badger. And I really want to be in the NFL."

She told him he could do all those things if he worked hard, and he never forgot her advice. Judy Keefe was an anomaly among the people who heard about his goals.

"I learned quickly that people don't take dreams like that seriously," Watt said.

Watt was scrawny in high school, but it would only be a matter of time before he matched the large frames of his father and uncles. People could tell by the size of his feet and hands.

"Everybody would tell us he's going to be a huge kid," said John Watt, his father.

"When he grows into his feet," added Connie Watt. "That was always the term."

In the meantime, J.J. was the backup quarterback at Pewaukee High School, having lost the starting job because he couldn't throw a bubble pass.

During Watt's junior year, Clay Iverson became the head football coach and had Watt play defensive end for the first time. Iverson was only 27 at the time and a little unsure of his instinct when he watched Watt on film. He turned to a defensive coach, Mike Lecher, for confirmation.

"I said, 'Mike, am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?' " Iverson said. "This kid's good, isn't he?"

After high school, Watt earned a football scholarship to Central Michigan but left after year to pursue his dream of playing for the Wisconsin Badgers.

He walked on and asked his parents to pay for one year of tuition - he hated asking them for that - and promised them he would earn a scholarship.

They agreed as long as he was willing to work hard. They were willing to pay for his entire college education even if he never got that scholarship. But if he wanted to get a scooter, like all the other football players at Wisconsin, he would have to get a job and earn the money to buy it.

Delivering pizzas paid well. He made enough money for that scooter and more. But the job at Pizza Hut isn't what drove him to succeed.

"Seeing how much faith my parents put in me, knowing what it took for me to leave a scholarship, leave a MAC (Mid-American Conference) championship team and take a gamble, I would look like a fool if I was wrong," Watt said. "And I don't like looking like a fool."

Hard work pays dividends

For six months, Watt took classes at a local community college, worked at the Pizza Hut and kept in shape.

He worked out four days a week with Brad Arnett, the trainer who helped Watt grow into his body starting in high school. The first time Arnett worked with Watt at his Next Level training facility was Jan. 31, 2006, when Watt was a high school junior and weighed 207 pounds. He now weighs 295.

As Watt prepared for Wisconsin, Arnett demanded even more.

"That six months was one of the biggest six months of my life because almost everybody was telling me it wasn't going to work," Watt said. "… It was just such a good feeling to go to the gym and know that I was working my tail off to make my dream come true.

"Regardless of what anybody else said. Regardless of whether people thought it was logical or not, whether people thought it was the right decision or not. Me and my trainer working our (butt) off every single day toward one goal."

At Pizza Hut, Watt was the fastest delivery driver and most dependable. He took pride in that. Only weather derailed him. One day, Watt tried to deliver a pizza in a snowstorm and got stuck after sliding down a snow bank.

He called a tow truck, which also got stuck. The towing company called a second truck, and it got stuck. Finally, he called his mom, who picked him up. The whole ordeal made him hungry, so he ate the order of pizza and wings while he waited for help.

"He claims he was in the snow so long that he had to eat the food in there to stay alive," said Tony Grant, Watt's store manager at the time. "But he wasn't in there that long."

Then there is the now famous time that he delivered pizza to the young boy who wondered why J.J. Watt was at his door.

"There's the report that I cried. I never cried," Watt said. "What was going through my mind was, this kid once saw me as the greatest, someone he looked up to. When I saw the look on his face, that for that split second he didn't see me as that anymore, that hurt. … It didn't change my life or make me want to go back and be a football player. But it re-instilled the drive in me to become great again, to become that kid's role model again."

Watt kept his word to his parents by earning a scholarship before he played a single down for the Badgers.

He made game-changing plays on command every time Wisconsin defensive line coach Charlie Partridge asked for them. He even did it once when a teammate jokingly told him to go block an extra point against Northwestern.

"The thing about J.J. is he's at his strongest when other people are at their weakest," Badgers coach Bret Bielema said.

A look of pride flashed across Watt's face when he heard what his former coach had said about it. He had trained his body to be that way.

That's why Watt awakened at 9 a.m. Tuesday, four hours after returning from the Texans' trip to New York to play the Jets. He went to Reliant Stadium and started lifting weights about 12 hours after that game ended. He grew up learning to work while everyone else rested. He expects that will help keep him from wearing down at the end of the season like many NFL players do.

Wisconsin beat Northwestern 70-23 in his last game at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison. Near the end of the game, Watt begged Bielema to let him back onto the field for one last play.

Bielema agreed, and Watt responded by making a tackle for loss on the play. As he got up from the ground, something happened that still gives him goose bumps.

The crowd began chanting his name.

"I just looked around," Watt said. "I just stood there and looked around and looked at the whole stadium. It was so surreal. It was so … this isn't real life. This is what you dream about. This is everything that you dream about as a kid. You dream about stadiums chanting your name, making the last play, all this, and it was happening to me."

Wisconsin all the way

Grandpa Watt's right suspender is red and had "Pirates and Badgers" emblazoned on it. The left one says "Grandpa." His daughter-in-law had those made for him before J.J. was drafted. J.J.'s brother, Derek, plays at Wisconsin, and T.J., his youngest brother, has committed to play there as well.

Watt's grandfather was one of the biggest and loudest fans of the Pewaukee Pirates until his health made it difficult for him to keep that up. He used to drive J.J. and his brothers to practice and watch all of them. Even in the rain, he would drive his car up a road only he was allowed to use and turn his lights on to watch.

Because of skin cancer, Grandpa Watt has to keep his head covered, so he wears a Houston Texans 2011 division championship hat. The elder Watt used to be a Packers fan but not.

You won't find Watt's jersey hanging prominently around town. The high school is planning to retire his number, but right now there is barely a mention that he went to school there. A row of photos in a glass trophy case boast eight players who recently earned major college scholarships. Watt's photo is not among them.

His face appears twice at the school - in two team photos.

His name appears on a computer printout that lists the school's track and field record holders. Watt is listed as the outdoor shot-put record holder at 59 feet, 111/4 inches.

Throughout his journey, Watt had plenty of detractors, but he never faced them alone. Support came from Pewaukee - his grandfather, his parents, his brothers, his friends, Mrs. Keefe and his high school coaches.

He invited Iverson and Lecher to the NFL draft. After the Texans selected Watt, Lecher made the rest of the party wait until the Packers made their selection at the end of the first round.

To Watt's dismay, Lecher wants the Packers to win Sunday night, but he wants Watt to have a big game.

Mrs. Keefe said she plans to sew together a Packers shirt and a Badgers shirt for the occasion.

"It changes things when your best friend is on the team," said Evan Conley, Watt's best friend and a freshman coach at Pewaukee High School. "The Packers are not going to go undefeated. If one of their losses is to the Texans, I can handle that."

In Wisconsin, the only thing bigger than the Badgers are the Packers. One of Watt's former classmate said he was rooting for the Packers but felt sorry for Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Another said she was a huge fan of Packers linebacker Clay Matthews and hoped Matthews and Watt could both get some sacks.

Watt secured 25 tickets for the game and planned to have 10 people staying at his home in Pearland. While there, they'll get their fill of Girl Scout cookies since the Girl Scouts in Watt's neighborhood have discovered that the big Texans defensive end Watt, with his soft heart, is an easy mark.

"I can't say no," Watt said. "The little girls come up to me, they knock on my door and say would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies? I'm sitting there, I'm an NFL player. I make millions of dollars. I'm not going to tell this little girl that I can't spend ten dollars on a box of cookies."

Now he's a role model

Twelve hundred miles from the serenity of his hometown, Watt finds peace by the pool at his home. He likes to sit there and listen.

"I listen to the quiet," Watt said.

On the field, Watt is brash and bold. He will yell at an opposing quarterback after batting down yet another pass that he shouldn't have expected to throw the ball over his head.

Off the field, he still can't believe how his life has changed.

His fifth-grade self couldn't imagine a life like this. And he loves that kids want to be like him. One student in Mrs. Keefe's class recently shocked his mother by eating vegetables. When she asked why he was eating vegetables, the boy replied, "J.J. said we have to eat vegetables."

He gets a kick out of the 75,000 Facebook followers he has gained since the season started. Or the hundreds of marriage proposals he has gotten just since last Monday night's victory over the Jets. Or even the men who write to say that if he wants to go on a date with their wives, they'd be OK with that. Leaving the house to go to the grocery store means being prepared for autograph and photo requests.

"How much love the city is showing me after booing me last year is awesome," Watt said. "It's so cool."

He hasn't forgotten the boos from the night he was drafted.

"A lot of them wanted Nick Fairley, a lot of them wanted Prince Amukamara," Watt said. "There were a lot of people saying I was just a big white guy, that the team was taking a high character guy, not the best football player."

Watt has a computer file of a video that shows fans at Reliant Stadium booing as the Texans selected him on draft day. The video also has interviews with some of those fans. One said he was canceling his season tickets. Another said it was a wasted pick.

But the last fan interviewed felt differently. That person said he loved the pick and that Watt would lead the Texans to a Super Bowl.

"If my dream comes true and we win a Super Bowl here, I want to find that guy," Watt said. "And I want to shake that guy's hand (and) say, 'Thank you for believing in me, and you were right.' "

tania.ganguli@chron.com twitter.com/taniaganguli