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J.J. Watt got into a social media beef with Pro Football Talk about his ‘false humility’
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If you follow J.J. Watt on any social media platform, you’ve probably seen it before. He posts a lot of pictures of himself, and sometimes, that’s not always received so well.
He posts plenty of non-selfie selfies of him at the gym in the middle of the night, in addition to random pictures where it looks like he’s modeling but he plays it off.
Plenty of people have called Watt out for the superhero-like image Watt tries to portray on social media, but Tuesday night got a little heated.
Before the United States Men’s National Team took on Argentina, Watt posted this picture of himself in an overly tight Team USA soccer jersey:
Kit is a big snug, but ready if called upon. #USAvARG pic.twitter.com/FTvx6LJ2fW
— JJ Watt (@JJWatt) June 22, 2016
For Watt, a post like that is pretty much par for the course. Someone else takes the picture of him supporting a cause, but ultimately, it comes off as him trying to look ripped for his followers.
So Pro Football Talk, an account run by NFL analyst Mike Florio, called out Watt publicly:
"Why does everyone always want to talk about me? I'm just minding my own business and seeking no attention at all." https://t.co/K67Av3zsDM
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) June 22, 2016
The sarcastic tweet was a bit out of the ordinary coming from an account that usually just tweets content from the website.
That led to a bit of a back-and-forth:
you do know how Twitter works, right? If you don't want to see it, stay off my page. Take your saltiness elsewhere.
— JJ Watt (@JJWatt) June 22, 2016
Pro Football Talk had a response for that, too:
I do stay off your page. I follow your team's page. They retweeted it. That's how Twitter works, right? https://t.co/4arzpy1LzB
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) June 22, 2016
And that led to this final shot from Pro Football Talk:
Take your false humility elsewhere.
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) June 22, 2016
That tweet is now pinned on the website’s Twitter page.
It’s rare not only to see a well-respected NFL publication (the Twitter account has 1.31 million followers) take a shot at arguably the best player in the sport. Perhaps that’s what prompted the war of words between the two parties.
If Watt continues to play up his American superhero image on social media, which he will, he’ll probably have a few more high-profile hecklers call him out for having “false humility.”
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Tradition. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.