As the Seattle Seahawks have moved to within a game from the Super Bowl, an interesting subplot has also emerged — the upward arc in the Riq Woolen redemption story.
Maybe it’s more accurate to call it a stairway, one he fell down during the season-opener against the 49ers and a few weeks later began climbing back up, with a few pauses here and there.
To briefly recap, Woolen entered the season entrenched as a starting cornerback opposite Devon Witherspoon, only to lose that title with a few spotty performances over the first month of the season.
Most notable? Misplaying two passes late in the season opener against the 49ers on their game-winning drive, allowing three completions on four targets and a TD for a passer rating when targeted of 156.3 (out of a possible 158.3) and getting called for two penalties.
A few weeks later, Woolen was placed into a time share with Josh Jobe, the two splitting snaps, but the team made a statement by having Jobe usually on the field for the first two series of the game as a corner in the base defense and the two rotating throughout the game. Both play when the team is in a nickel defense, its predominant alignment.
At the same time, reports in national media surfaced that Woolen — who is in the final season of his four-year rookie contract — could be had in a trade.
It was a low point in a career for a player who made the Pro Bowl as a rookie in 2022 when he tied for the NFL lead in interceptions with six and seemed destined to live up to the draft-day comparisons made to Richard Sherman when he arrived as a fifth-round pick — taken 153rd overall, one spot before where Sherman was selected in 2011.
Few figured in September that Woolen would still be wearing a Seahawks jersey when the trade deadline rolled around on Nov. 4.
But there he was Saturday night, playing 44 snaps (73.3%), breaking up two passes, allowing just one completion on three targets for 19 yards (via Pro Football Focus), a passer rating of 56.3 and playing a key part of another dominant defensive effort as the Seahawks beat the 49ers 41-6.
The game continued a recent run of consistent blanket coverage efforts for Woolen. After allowing 208 receiving yards in the first five games of the season, he’s allowed 119 in 12 games since.
Maybe just as eye-catching?
Woolen rushing to team with Witherspoon to make a tackle of Christian McCaffrey short of the sticks on a third-down pass when the score was 17-0 and the outcome still technically still in doubt and force a 49ers field goal — the kind of hard-nosed play some have questioned how well he can make.
While his pass misplays might have been the biggest reason he lost starter status, a reputation for inconsistent tacking has dogged Woolen the last few years.
Woolen has an above-average tackling grade of 72.5 or better in five of the last six games from Pro Football Focus, including a season-high 78.2 on Saturday night, and he has a run defense grade of 70.9 for the season, 25th of 102 cornerbacks.
“It’s just his growth and his focus,” defensive coordinator Aden Durde said recently. “Really I would say mental toughness to lock in and just get on and prepare and grow in his role. I think you just see him, he’s locked in every day at practice. He’s ready to go. Whatever he needs to do, he does it, and he’s out there and he owns his role. He dominates his role a lot of the time.”
Repeating what he’s said consistently over the last few months, Woolen said after Saturday’s game that despite the shaky start to the season and subsequent trade rumors, “I never doubted myself.”
But he acknowledged that “I knew that everything was on me and I had to push myself. Other than that, I already know that I can do it, and I continue to do it.”
Any improvement in his play, he says, is a natural offshoot of that attitude.
“If you are the same as you are the first day at camp, you are wrong,” he said. “I feel like it’s the same during the season. If you are the same person from the first day of the season, then you’re wrong. No matter how good or how bad you start off, you still have to continue to get better. That’s what I did throughout this season. In order to be a pro, you have to be able to have that mentality to where you have to grow.”
Many around the team have credited coach Mike Macdonald for how he handled a potentially delicate situation to form a co-starting cornerback duo on one side and a three-man cornerback grouping overall that has played as well as any in the NFL the last half of the season.
“I think every time, every single person I’ve seen with Mike and most of the coaches on our roster is that every piece of information you give them, whether it be, good, bad, indifferent, you always do it with care and love,’’ Durde said. “And I think you always have a solution for people, and you get on with it and you move forward.”
Macdonald says the goal is simply to find whatever message works to get players to reach their potential.
“Sometimes it comes different ways and guys have different ways of reacting to it,” Macdonald said. “But that’s kind of the types of guys we want around here, and Riq is one of those guys. He’s done a great job.”
To be sure, Woolen has lots of reasons to be motivated.
For the future, there is a potentially big payday waiting for him this spring. Woolen is in the final season of his four-year rookie contract and can be a free agent in March.
CBSSports.com rated Woolen 13th on an updated list of the Top 50 potential free agents and the first cornerback last week. The site noted, as have many, that Woolen may feel more comfortable in a system similar to what he worked in during his first two years with the Seahawks, which was regarded as less complex and featuring more press man coverage than Macdonald’s zone-oriented scheme.
Given other items on the Seahawks’ offseason do-to list — which could include signing Witherspoon and receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba to extensions that could make each among the most highly-paid players at their positions — conventional wisdom has been that Woolen is likely wearing a different uniform next season.
But his play of late has only reinforced to coaches and teammates that there’s still a place for him on this Seahawks team.
“We love him, and we love where he’s at,” safety Julian Love said last week. “Confidence is such a big thing, in football and (in) general, but especially at corner. And he’s always a confident guy, but it’s tough when you don’t make a play or two. It’s tough to fight that internal battle. So to see him go out there, you see the swagger and pep in his step, the celebrations he has when he makes plays, we love him.”