Richard Sherman thinks Seahawks’ Tariq Woolen may be named All-Pro by this season’s end
The mentor is pleased with his protege.
So pleased, Richard Sherman thinks Tariq Woolen could be named an All-Pro cornerback at the end of this season.
His rookie season.
“I mean, he may find himself on an All-Pro team,” Sherman, Seattle’s legendary cornerback and three-time All-Pro, said of the Seahawks’ wondrous fifth-round draft choice this spring.
No Seahawks player on offense or defense has been a first-team All-Pro for his rookie season.
The only three Seahawks who have been All-Pro as rookies were chosen for their excellence on special teams: punter Michael Dickson in 2018, kick returner Tyler Lockett in 2015 and kick returner Bobby Joe Edmonds in 1986.
This summer, Sherman took coach Pete Carroll up on his offer to tutor the 6-foot-4 Woolen on cornerback play during Seattle’s training camp. Carroll saw in Woolen what he saw in Sherman in 2011, when he also made him a fifth-round pick: another long, tall cornerback who was a wide receiver his first years in college.
Carroll put Woolen in the Sherman mold — and in the starting lineup for the Seahawks’ defense from the first game of the preseason, in August.
Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner is getting attention around the league for becoming NFL defensive rookie of the year. The New York Jets’ fourth-overall pick in this year’s draft has been a shutdown star at cornerback.
At 6-3, 200 pounds, Gardner is an inch shorter and nine pounds lighter than Woolen. In man-to-man coverage for the Jets this season Gardner leads the NFL in yards passing against (28), completion rate allowed (30%) and an advanced statistic coverage success rate (80%). Yet the Jets don’t feature man coverage much.
In all coverages, zone and man, Gardner has a league-leading 16 passes defensed. He was a AFC defensive player of the week in October.
But he isn’t what Woolen is: the NFL’s co-leader in interceptions, with six.
Woolen has the third-most pass breakups, 13, tied with Dallas star Trevon Diggs. Gardner has two interceptions in 13 games, as teams sometimes avoid throwing his way.
Tariq Woolen’s Richard Sherman treatment
For Seattle, many Seahawks opponents have been giving Woolen the treatment Sherman got when he was a Super Bowl champion and Legion of Boom cornerstone in Seattle in the middle of the 2010s. Foes have targeted Woolen only twice, once or not at all in games.
Yet Woolen was the league’s defensive rookie of the month for October. That was when he was allowing a meager 36.9 passer rating when targeted as the nearest defender, fourth-lowest among NFL cornerbacks.
In October Woolen became the first rookie in the NFL since Cleveland’s Joe Haden in 2010 to have an interception in four consecutive games. He became the Seahawks’ first league rookie of the month since Lofa Tatupu in 2005.
Woolen has multiple interceptions this season coming off his assigned man or area to pick off a throw to another receiver, not one closest to him.
Like Sherman did, Woolen also has become deft at fooling opposing quarterbacks into thinking a receiver is open, by laying off him. Then Woolen uses his wowing, 4.26-second speed in the 40-yard dash (Sherman’s was 4.56) to make up that space while the pass is in flight.
“Yeah, I feel like that part of my game is a special part to it, because of my length, my speed, being explosive, and being a little twitchy,” he said. “I just try to add that to my game because, one, the quarterbacks find ways to avoid guys, but at the same time, they are going to find a way to get the receiver the football.
“There are times when they might think he is open, so I’ll just try to bait them into throwing the ball. If they do, I just try to make a play.”
Sherman will be an analyst for Amazon Prime on its telecast of the Seahawks’ pivotal NFC West game against the San Francisco 49ers at Lumen Field Thursday night. He recognizes Gardner’s debut season as outstanding, and thinks Gardner may win rookie of the year.
But he sees Woolen as equally if not more worthy.
“It would be weird for him to not win defensive rookie of the year and be on an All-Pro team,” Sherman said. “But leading the league in interceptions, you got to get something for it.”
Richard Sherman teaching Tariq Woolen
Sherman spent parts of a few weeks at Seahawks preseason practices. He was on the field at the team’s mock-game scrimmage at Lumen Field in early August.
He said he tutored Woolen mainly on in-game intricacies, “the mental side of being out there. The mental side of preparing...to understand, hey, anything you gave up earlier in the game they are going to come back and you are going to see it again.
“And I also taught him to play the ball and put two hands on it, any chance he got.”
That’s a reference to what Carroll and defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt described last week as Woolen’s biggest weakness entering the NFL this spring: catching the ball for interceptions rather than just defending passes.
“Pete and those guys were saying he can’t catch. And, you know, anytime it’s a former receiver they say it’s because he can’t catch,.” Sherman, the former Stanford wide receiver, said. “But, I mean, there had to be some ability to catch there.
“And in practice, at times, he’d just be batting the ball for no reason. It’s like, ‘Man, you are there! You could have easily picked that one! Pick it until you can’t.’
“But he’s got (assistant defensive backs coach and former Seahawks teammate of Sherman’s) DeShawn Shead. He’s got great DB coaches there that are working with him every day.
“But that was just my little two cents.”
At first, the 23-year-old Woolen marveled that the retired, 34-year-old Sherman was talking to him, let alone coaching him.
“Whenever I moved from receiver (while at Texas-San Antonio in 2019), I used to watch him and Jalen Ramsey highlights all the time,” Woolen said, “because they are two guys that always use to guard my favorite receiver. So whenever I moved positions, I always used to just watch Richard.”
As far as teaching, Sherman wanted to give Woolen tips on the mentally preparing for each game, and adjusting during it. He left the teaching of physical fundamentals such as Carroll’s unique step-kick technique and various coverages mostly to the Seahawks coaches.
“Sherm just kind of hung with us. He was there and was talking about what was happening,” Carroll said. “He didn’t go into great depth, and he knew we needed to really respect the process and not fill his head with a bunch of things. Sherm handled it beautifully, but he was there for him, and just there for him to walk off the field and just answer any questions and things.
“I thought he was really supportive, and it worked out nicely under the circumstances.”
This story was originally published December 15, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
