NFL 100: At No. 26, Rod Woodson, whose physical, athletic play was before his time
Welcome to the NFL 100, The Athletic’s endeavor to identify the 100 best players in football history. You can order the book version here. Every day until the season begins, we’ll unveil new members of the list, with the No. 1 player to be crowned Sept. 8.
When you think of Rod Woodson, you think of a Hall of Fame defensive back who was equally fast as he was athletic. If you are a Steelers fan, you might want to add one of the few times the organization was wrong when it came to letting a player leave prematurely because that’s still a sore subject.
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Nobody views Woodson as the greatest defensive back in the history of the league right there with the likes of Deion Sanders, but maybe they should.
“Deion and I just had different games,” Woodson said via telephone from his Las Vegas home. “I was a physical corner and Deion liked to use his speed. The difference was he would tell you how it was and I wouldn’t say anything.”
Woodson enjoyed a storied 17-year career in which he played 164 games at cornerback and 74 games at free safety. His 238 games played as a defensive back rank fifth all time.
Statistically, Woodson’s numbers were better across the board than Sanders’ — 71 interceptions to Sanders’ 53, 1,158 tackles to his 512, 13 defensive touchdowns to his 10.
“Deion gets so much credit for who he was during that era, which he should,” said Ryan Clark, a 13-year safety who’s now an ESPN analyst. “But Rod Woodson was on the same level and then you add to that basically two Hall of Fame careers at two different positions. When you look at a guy like Rod from an athleticism standpoint, he’s before his time, but his style of play and the reason it wasn’t as talked about as much as it should have was because of the physicality of the style of play of that era.”
But this isn’t about comparing who was better, Woodson or Sanders. It is about Woodson maybe being one of the more low-key best players who ever played. He made 11 Pro Bowls at three positions and is a six-time All-Pro at two positions. He is a three-time team MVP and was one of only five active players named to the NFL’s 75th anniversary team in 1994. He was selected to the Steelers’ 75th anniversary team and named the Defensive Player of the Year after the 1993 season.
Yet when you hear debates about the best defensive backs who ever played, Sanders, Darrell Green and Charles Woodson (of no relation) are immediately mentioned.
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Rarely is Rod Woodson.
“I don’t believe that in any way that he is underrated because he is a Hall of Famer,” Clark said. “However, his input to the game isn’t talked as profoundly as it should.”
It could be because of his lack of flash.
Woodson grew up in a small Indiana town and was greatly influenced by his hard-working, never-complaining father. So it is not a surprise that Sanders, whose career somewhat paralleled that of Woodson’s, got the publicity (and rightfully so) while Woodson went about his daily business.
“Deion is his own creation. He is a great brander. I am not a brander. I am a blue-collar, Midwest football player,” Woodson said. “That was my dad. He worked (as a laborer) with his hard hat on and he went to work. He didn’t complain about it, he didn’t talk about it, he just went to work and that’s how I played football. I was a blue-collar football player. One thing that Chuck Noll told me when I got there in 1987 was that if I don’t tackle, I don’t play. I told him we don’t have to worry about that. I used to play tackle football in the streets.”
Woodson would not have been overlooked if he was coming out today. He was 6 feet and 202 pounds, ran a 4.33-second 40-yard dash at the combine, had a 36-inch vertical leap and long arms. He also had the athleticism to be a world-class 110-meter hurdler at Purdue and for a few months on the European track circuit, where he competed as he held out the first half of his rookie year with the Steelers. Woodson qualified for the Olympic trials in the hurdles in 1984, but he was far from being a prototypical track guy.
When Woodson ran the 4.33, he was immediately branded as a cornerback. Until then, he had been a safety — except for his final year at Purdue when he moved around just about everywhere. In his final regular-season college game, a 17-15 win against Indiana, Woodson started at running back and rushed for 93 yards, caught three passes for 67 yards, made 10 tackles, forced a fumble, returned two kickoffs for 46 yards and returned three punts for 30 yards. He played 137 snaps, roughly 90 percent of the game.
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“Rod Woodson was actually before his time,” Clark said. “When we talk about the long corners and having the length on the outside with speed, Rod Woodson was that. We just didn’t go goo-goo eyes over the measurables at that time.”
Woodson was a consensus top-five pick in the 1987 draft. With the Steelers selecting 10th that year, Noll was so convinced he had so little chance of Woodson falling to them that he told defensive coordinator Tony Dungy not to even bother scouting him.
When draft day came, the Steelers were stunned Woodson was still around and wasted no time selecting him. Surely the Browns were going to take Woodson or Penn State linebacker Shane Conlan at No. 5, but they decided on Duke linebacker Mike Junkin, who played 20 games in three years before he was out of the league.
That decision allowed the Cardinals to take quarterback Kelly Stouffer and the Bills to select Conlan. The Lions and Eagles passed on Woodson, and the rest, as they say, was history.
“I never talked to them, and as a matter of fact, on draft day, the Saints called me and told me that they were drafting me at 11 if I was there, it’s not even a question,” Woodson said. “Once the Browns took Junkin, the draft board shifted a little bit in my favor because I was able to drop a little because the teams ahead of the Steelers already had corners. I never talked to the Steelers, but when they did call, I was pretty excited because we only had three channels and all the good teams were on so I could be a part of a team I watched a lot.”
Woodson’s time with the Steelers didn’t start well. Because he held out for the first half of the season in a contract dispute, there was some concern he didn’t want to play in the NFL. There were whispers he’d forgo the start of his pro football career for an opportunity to compete in the 1988 Olympic Games in track and field.
When he finally signed, he was a role player for the final eight games of the 1987 season. He continued to learn the cornerback position the following year.
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It wasn’t until 1989 when Woodson finally broke out.
“Moving to corner took every bit of three years to feel comfortable,” Woodson said. “I was able to play corner and still have my eyes in the backfield. That wasn’t a good thing when you play corner, which I didn’t know at the time.”
It wasn’t until Noll’s successor, Bill Cowher, took over that Woodson blossomed. In 1992, he was second on the team with 100 tackles and collected six sacks. The next season, he had eight interceptions, 28 passes defended, two forced fumbles, two quarterback sacks, a blocked field goal attempt and a team-high 79 solo tackles. For his effort, he was named NFL Defensive Player of the Year.
Woodson was arguably the best cornerback in the league from 1989 to 1994, when he made six Pro Bowls and earned five All-Pro nominations. He had 27 interceptions and returned three of them for touchdowns, and he was an asset as an outside tackling corner.
In 1995, the Steelers were primed to rebound from the devastating AFC Championship Game loss to the Chargers, and Woodson was going to be one of the catalysts to make that happen. However, it all came crashing down thanks to Barry Sanders and the artificial turf at Three Rivers Stadium late in the first quarter of the opener against the Lions.
Woodson tore the ACL in his right knee while trying to stop Sanders, and his standing as the NFL’s best cornerback ended. Woodson also injured the MCL, complicating issues.
Still, he immediately thought he could be back by the end of the season.
“It was my idea,” Woodson said. “I was with Cowher and the team doctor gave the prognosis of four to six months’ recovery and I was like, ‘Whoa, wait, four months? That’s the end of the season.’ I said, ‘I can get back by then.’ Cowher is looking at me like I am crazy and I am like, ‘No, I can be back.’ We were so good and Carnell (Lake) was so good at corner and no other injuries happened in our secondary (so that) allowed me to stay on the active roster. Bill said that we could do that right now, but if a couple of guys get hurt, we are going to have to put you on IR.”
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Cowher thought about it for a day or two before tentatively agreeing to it. It helped that Cowher was able to move Lake from safety to corner a couple of games later and Lake played at an All-Pro level. It also was imperative that nobody in the secondary got hurt so the Steelers didn’t need Woodson’s roster spot. He returned just shy of five months after the injury, playing as a backup and deflecting one pass in the Super Bowl XXX loss to the Cowboys.
“It was one of those times when you lose a Rod Woodson, you kind of wonder where we are going to go,” team owner Art Rooney II told The Athletic. “To be honest with you, I didn’t think Carnell was going to do what he did when he stepped in there. You don’t always think of your safety stepping in at cornerback and think it is going to be a good thing.”
Five months later, Woodson became the first player to return from an ACL injury in the same season.
“I was maybe 60 percent,” Woodson said. “It felt great leading up to it, practicing on it felt great. I thought it was good enough.”
Woodson played one more season for the Steelers in 1996 and became an unrestricted free agent in 1997. He was plagued by injuries in 1996, including a strained Achilles, a sprained knee and an ailing back. He declined the Steelers’ contract offer and signed with the 49ers.
During the 10 years he played in Pittsburgh, the Steelers finished with a winning record in all but two seasons. They made six playoff appearances, won four division titles and claimed one AFC championship.
Woodson spent one season with the 49ers before being a salary-cap casualty. He signed with the Ravens and spent one year at corner before making the switch back to safety under defensive coordinator Marvin Lewis once they chose cornerbacks Duane Starks and Chris McAlister in the first round in back-to-back drafts.
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While in Baltimore, he made four Pro Bowls, was an All-Pro in 2001 and helped the Ravens win Super Bowl XXXV as a 35-year-old safety. He played his final two seasons for the Raiders and returned to the Super Bowl in the 2002 season, when he again earned Pro Bowl and All-Pro honors after tying for the league lead with eight interceptions.
“Just listen to Rod and let him talk defense with you and he has a masterful mind,” former Steelers teammate Craig Wolfley said. “Besides the great and almost unbelievable athletic skills of his physical attributes of strength and speed, but his mind … if you are talking top, shutdown guys in the league, if he is not top three in the conversation then somebody is (mistaken).”
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photo: George Gojkovich / Getty Images)
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