New Tariq Woolen test: Staying in games as Seahawks foes avoid him like Richard Sherman
Tariq Woolen’s early NFL career really is mirroring the start of Richard Sherman’s.
Like he’s wearing Seattle number 25 and it’s 2011, opponents are avoiding Woolen’s side of the field, refusing to challenge him.
Woolen has been a Seahawk for all of nine games.
Two weeks ago, the then-6-1 New York Giants saw Woolen that intercepted a pass in four consecutive games to co-lead the league in interceptions. Quarterback Daniel Jones then targeted the 6-foot-4 rookie cornerback directly only twice in 36 drop backs to pass on Oct. 30. Woolen knocked away the first of those two targets, in the fourth quarter. Seattle won 27-13.
Last weekend, coach Kilff Kingsbury and the Cardinals remembered Woolen intercepting Kyler Murray in Arizona’s 19-9 loss at Seattle last month. They had elite wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins back from injury last Sunday. Yet they targeted him against Woolen just twice among the Cardinals’ 40 dropbacks, following the Giants in going at opposite Seattle cornerback Michael Jackson and the field’s middle instead. Woolen batted down one of those two passes — and angrily reacted because he thought he should have intercepted it in front of Hopkins.
The Seahawks won their fourth straight game, 31-21.
“Shoot...,” Woolen said, using his favorite phrase-starter he speaks in his easy, native-Texan drawl.
“As long as I am in the game, we are making plays, we are doing the right thing, and we are all working together, it’s a lot of fun. No matter if I get 100 balls thrown or zero, as long as I’m out there having fun, I don’t really trip.”
Woolen’s got a trip this week. A looooooong one.
The NFL defensive rookie of the month for October and his first-place Seahawks (6-3) were boarding a larger-than-their-normal team jet Wednesday evening. It was bound for Munich and Seattle’s game Sunday against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (4-5).
It’s a 12 1/2-hour flight to the first NFL game played in Germany.
That’s 12 1/2 hours that coach Pete Carroll and defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt, secondary coach Karl Scott, every Seahawk but mascot Blitz can continue their recent harping on Woolen.
And the only reason Blitz won’t is because he is already in Munich.
Because chances are as strong as the German bier market that Tom Brady is going to mostly avoid Woolen, too.
“We all stay in his ear,” Hurtt said. “I stay in his ear. Karl Scott, (Seahawks Pro Bowl safety) Quandre Diggs, and his teammates.
“You don’t want to be the guy where you start to relax thinking things won’t start coming your way and you have stuff figured out. It’s never like that, because this game will humble you really fast.”
Hurtt’s message to the best rookie cornerback to play for Seattle since, well, Sherman from 2011-17?
“You have to make sure that you stay on top of the details, you’re involved in every route, you are always staying ready. And he is,” Hurtt said. “He is a hungry kid. There are no signs of complacency or anything of that nature, but we stay on top of it just to remind him.”
Woolen has heard the reminders to stay in the game about as often as he’s heard his teammates call him “Avatar.”
“He probably gets a little annoyed with that,” Hurtt said. “I don’t know that he does, but I don’t care if he does.
“We are going to make sure that he is ready, so we don’t have any situations like that.”
That challenge is real.
NFL NextGen Stats says Woolen has allowed the fourth-lowest passer rating in the league as the nearest defender in coverage this season.
The operators of the retractable roof at opened State Farm Stadium had gotten more action Sunday than Woolen had into the fourth quarter of a 10-point game. Then the Cardinals split tight end Zach Ertz outside wide left opposite Woolen near the goal line. They had him run a quick slant route.
Ertz got inside Woolen, which few receivers have done this season. Murray’s pass onto Ertz’s chest got Arizona its first offensive score since its opening drive of the game.
Hurtt wasn’t worried about that.
“Again, (he played) very well,” the defensive coordinator said. “Some people may point out the touchdown pass or whatever. And, obviously, he was pissed off about that. But I thought he played a heck of a football game all the way around.
“He was doing all of the little things the right way: tackling, covering, and communicating in coverage. So he’s doing really well.”
Tariq Woolen follows Richard Sherman
Carroll has welcomed the parallels between Woolen now and Sherman from his rookie season of 2011. The coach has even detailed them himself.
Carroll and general manager John Schneider drafted both in the fifth round. Both Sherman and Woolen were wide receivers in college, Sherman at Stanford, Woolen at Texas-San Antonio. Both are taller and have far longer arms than average NFL cornerbacks. Sherman became the prototype for a Seahawks cornerback under Carroll that the coach got back to this spring in Woolen, after a couple years of shorter, decisive D.J. Reed and 2021 rookie pick Tre Brown at corners.
In 2011, “we got banged around at corner, and there was a time where Richard was breaking in and starting to do his stuff, and there was a chance to make a call like ‘Hey, we can start him, give him his shot,’” Carroll said.
That was six games into Sherman’s rookie season.
Woolen got his shot immediately, starting from the first preseason game at Pittsburgh in August. He missed a tackle on one of his first NFL plays. Then he got suckered inside on a double move outside and allowed a Steelers touchdown to end his first pro drive that August night.
But unlike Sherman, Woolen was impressive from day one of training camp. Woolen stayed with the two fastest Seahawks receivers, U.S. Track & Field Golden Games sprinter DK Metcalf and former U.S. Track Olympic team member Marquise Goodwin, each day of camp. Woolen would not let Metcalf and Goodwin get past or around him.
Sherman in 2011?
“I went back to his camp reps, and I’m going to say it and let him be mad at me: His camp reps, his one-on-ones and stuff like that, it was up and down, and he didn’t look great,” Carroll said.
“But he had already kind of won me over as a guy, and as a competitor and all. It wasn’t the film that got him out there, it was really the person and the way he attacked stuff. I’m sure I’m back in good graces now.
“But that was a time, we were trying to uncover talent and we were trying to figure it out. And we had to take a shot at some guys, so that was one of them. He hadn’t put together just a great looking resume on film to that point, but his attitude and his competitiveness was really like, ‘Okay, let’s go see what he can do.’ So, shoot, the rest is history
Sherman has been tutoring Woolen since the summer. The Seahawks’ iconic All-Pro cornerback and charter member of the team’s “Legion of Boom” secondary that won a Super Bowl and came within a yard of winning a second was at practices during training camp. He was on the sidelines at the team’s annual mock-game scrimmage at Lumen Field in early August.
Woolen’s next Sherman act: the deke
Sherman is now an analyst for Amazon Prime’s telecasts of Thursday night games. He also has been a consultant, to use Carroll’s word, into this season.
The next evolution in Woolen’s game to mimick Sherman’s early Seahawks career: baiting quarterbacks to throw to him when he looks disinterested. Sherman turned that into art by the mid-2010s.
But Brady this weekend is the last guy in the NFL who’s likely to fall for that.
“This guy has seen everything. There’s not a whole lot that you can disguise from him, but you have to continue to work that way,” Hurtt said of his Seahawks defense that’s been the NFL’s best during the team’s four-game winning streak.
“We have to play smart like we’ve been doing. Obviously, we have to change up some looks and things like that. If we can catch him off guard, that would be great.
“But like I said, this guy has played a lot of football. ‘The GOAT’; everybody says that. This guy is the best, so you have to work to that and look forward to the challenge.”
This story was originally published November 9, 2022 at 11:39 AM.
