Watt opens up about undergoing 3 major surgeries in 2015

It's been a trying year for J.J. Watt.

By his count, the Houston Texans defensive end has suffered a broken hand, staph infection, two torn abs, three torn adductor muscles, and a herniated disc on two occasions. All of those injuries took place during the 2015 season, a season in which, astonishingly, Watt didn't miss a game.

In fact, he racked up 76 tackles and 17.5 sacks while fighting off those injuries and claimed the third Defensive Player of the Year title of his career.

But after undergoing offseason surgery to repair the herniated disc, Watt re-aggravated the injury this season. It has cost him the rest of the year and forced him to think about his football mortality.

"Some people started to wonder if I was done. There was a time when I genuinely wondered, 'Am I done?'" he wrote in an article for The Players' Tribune.

"I didn't feel like myself. I had never even had one major surgery before, much less three in one year. To have the game taken away from me three times - each time left to wonder if I would ever be the same again - that was hard. That was the first time the word retirement had ever crept into my head."

While his Texans are currently leading the AFC South, Watt has been in Wisconsin rehabbing. For the past two months, he said he hasn't been allowed to do anything but walk.

"It's been like a mini-retirement," he said.

Watt may be back at home and out of the public eye, but he wrote that the sport of football has been everything to him since he was 10 years old, and therefore he will give everything he has to return to the game.

"Am I done? Hell no," he wrote. "I'm just getting started."