RENTON — Tariq Woolen walked somewhat hesitantly into the Seahawks’ meeting room at the NFL combine in Indianapolis last March.
He’d had two previous meetings with the Seahawks, including at the Senior Bowl, which he said tended to focus more on what the film showed he’d done wrong than what he’d done right.
“I still remember my two meetings before that I was all sweating and nervous,” Woolen said, adding that after he left each “it was like ‘man, why did I come here?’”
Woolen isn’t the only draft prospect who has gotten that kind of treatment — Bobby Wagner often told the story of how he was “grilled” so hard by the Seahawks during a pre-draft visit that he thought “the last thing” that would happen is the team ever drafting him. Wagner said he realized later the team was just trying “to see how tough I was.”
But in Indianapolis, the mood changed.
Woolen walked into the team’s official meeting room there and laughed that when he first saw defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt, a former defensive tackle at the University of Miami, “I was like ‘Dang, this must be coach Pete’s (Carroll’s) body guard or something.’”
Then from the corner he saw Carroll himself walk toward him.
“He seen me and he started smiling,” Woolen said. “And from there I started smiling, too. And then we just sat down and they just showed plays and he was just asking ‘how did I learn how to play back shoulders, why did I do this on certain plays’ and I told them, and he was like ‘OK, OK.’”
And all the plays they showed Woolen this time, he said “was the good plays.”
“And shoot,” he said. “It was just good vibes from there.”
It has been with Woolen and the Seahawks ever since.
He was drafted by Seattle the following month, taken in the fifth round out of University of Texas-San Antonio, generally regarded as a project due to having played cornerback barely more than two seasons in college.
Woolen has proved a quicker study than anyone could have imagined, with a meteoric rise to starter at right cornerback by the time preseason games began, to getting his first pick-six against Detroit two weeks ago, and on Wednesday being named the NFC’s Defensive Player of the Week following Seattle’s 19-9 win over Arizona in which he nabbed his fourth interception in the last four games.
Woolen is tied for first in the NFL in interceptions with Buffalo’s Jordan Poyer, and is already tied for the most interceptions for a season by a rookie in team history behind only the five of Earl Thomas (2010) and Michael Boulware (2004).
He is also allowing a passer rating of just 38.6 for the season, fourth-lowest of any cornerback in the NFL (consider that a QB would get a rating of 39.6 for a game if all he did was throw an incompletion on every play, with the interceptions bringing the number down even further).
And this week he is fourth on VegasInsider.com’s list of NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year candidates at 8-1 (New York Jets cornerback Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner, the fourth overall pick, is first at 3-1).
Woolen’s progress has been so stunning that the comparisons to Richard Sherman that were made at the time of the draft based mostly on the similarities in their physique (Woolen’s 6-4 to Sherman’s 6-3), background (Sherman also began his college career as a receiver) and where they were selected (Sherman was the 154th overall pick, Woolen 153rd), increasingly apply to the quality of their play on the field in the NFL.
One place they differ is in temperament.
While Sherman was the embodiment of the emotional and boisterous Legion of Boom, famously willing to ask Tom Brady “You Mad, Bro?” halfway through his second season, Woolen is often described as “laid back” and even keel — Woolen apologized to media Wednesday for being a few minutes late to a news conference.
Woolen, in fact, thinks his easygoing personality may have hurt him in the run-up to the draft despite his impressive tangibles, which included a 4.26 40.
While there were obvious questions about his lack of experience playing cornerback — he switched from receiver late in the 2019 season — and production (he had just two interceptions in college), Woolen said: “I heard something about me just being too laid back and just a goofy person. I always smile, which I don’t think there’s a reason not to.”
Hurtt similarly laughed at Woolen’s description of him as Carroll’s bodyguard — he hadn’t been at the earlier meetings, scheduled with some defensive linemen, instead.
“It was funny because that was exactly how he looked at me,” said Hurtt, who was a defensive tackle at the University of Miami.
What did Hurtt first think of Woolen?
“Polite kid, laid back,” Hurtt said. “The first thing you say when you see him is ‘that’s a pretty damn big corner.’ He was impressive going through the interview process. You were curious because he was pretty new to the position (switching in 2020) and with his football IQ and all that stuff. But he was an impressive kid.”
And Hurtt thinks there’s a positive in Woolen’s self-described “goofy” personality and that it may be part of why “he doesn’t panic when the ball is in the air” compared to other cornerbacks who he thinks can sometimes “get frantic” and out of position.
“That laid-back personality, that cool confidence that he has, you see that in his play as well,” Hurtt said. “So that’s not always a negative.”
Indeed, while Woolen may express his confidence differently than Sherman did, it doesn’t mean he lacks for it.
Woolen called being named player of the week “pretty good” but that he hopes it’s just the first of many awards.
“I want to be player of the month, player of the year, whatever,” he said. “That’s just one steppingstone to reaching even more goals and gives you even more confidence to go out and do what you do.”
And while Woolen’s ascension in the early weeks of the NFL season couldn’t have been foreseen by anyone — even the uber-optimistic Carroll — Woolen says he’s sort of surprised, but not really.
“Honestly no, but yeah at the same time,” he said. “I knew that hard work never goes unnoticed. You just keep putting in work, keep doing what you are doing and willing to get better and something great is going to happen.”
And like Sherman, he carries with him the memory of all the teams that passed on him.
“Playing teams I met with, it feels good just because I feel like I proved a point to them,” he said.
Or as Hurtt said: “I’m glad a lot of people missed out on him and we got him.”