Your nickname is “GM,” you own a time machine, and you need a defensive back.
Ronnie Lott, the No. 8 overall pick of the 1981 draft, and Rod Woodson, the No. 10 pick from 1987, are both on the board. That time machine is pretty slick. You can get either one at age 27.
But you only get one. It’s a tough call.
Lott is on the NFL’s 11-man, all-time defensive team picked in 2000 by the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee. Woodson was only 29 years old — he would play nine more seasons — when he was named to the NFL’s 75th-anniversary defensive all-star team in 1994.
“I used to love watching that guy play,” Woodson said in February at Super Bowl XLIII. “I mean, how tough do you have to be to cut your own finger off?
“If they would have said, ‘Rod, you’ve got to miss a month or cut your finger off,’ I’m missing a month.”
Lott chose to have a half-inch of his left pinkie finger amputated rather than miss part of the 1986 season.
“I’m not a real tough guy, like Ronnie,” Woodson went on. “In his book, he said when he hit people, he ran through them. He used to knock the snot out of himself.
“Man ... that makes you tough. Me? I wasn’t trying to hurt myself.”
Of course, that’s Woodson being humble.
True, Lott was a more fearsome tackler that Woodson. But Woodson was hardly a wimp, and he didn’t play safety — where slobberknockers are a bigger part of the job description — until the last five of his 17 seasons.
Woodson was faster than Lott. Woodson finished second to sprinting legend Darrell Green in a 1988 TV competition to determine “the NFL’s fastest man.” Woodson qualified for the 1984 Olympic trials as a 19-year-old college sophomore.
Chuck Noll, a tough guy’s tough guy, deemed Woodson to be plenty tough in 1987. It sounded so strange to hear Noll say it before he drafted the Purdue All-American, but he said it:
“I’m in love with Rod Woodson.”
Woodson could lay the wood as needed — often enough, he recovered fumbles he caused. His calling card, though, was hitting game plans like a brick wall. He took away one side of the field.
Sackmaster Bruce Smith, who joins Woodson in the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2009, recalls a standing theme when Buffalo was game-planning for Woodson’s Steelers:
Your nickname is “GM,” you own a time machine, and you need a defensive back.
Ronnie Lott, the No. 8 overall pick of the 1981 draft, and Rod Woodson, the No. 10 pick from 1987, are both on the board. That time machine is pretty slick. You can get either one at age 27.
But you only get one. It’s a tough call.
Lott is on the NFL’s 11-man, all-time defensive team picked in 2000 by the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee. Woodson was only 29 years old — he would play nine more seasons — when he was named to the NFL’s 75th-anniversary defensive all-star team in 1994.
“I used to love watching that guy play,” Woodson said in February at Super Bowl XLIII. “I mean, how tough do you have to be to cut your own finger off?
“If they would have said, ‘Rod, you’ve got to miss a month or cut your finger off,’ I’m missing a month.”
Lott chose to have a half-inch of his left pinkie finger amputated rather than miss part of the 1986 season.
“I’m not a real tough guy, like Ronnie,” Woodson went on. “In his book, he said when he hit people, he ran through them. He used to knock the snot out of himself.
“Man ... that makes you tough. Me? I wasn’t trying to hurt myself.”
Of course, that’s Woodson being humble.
True, Lott was a more fearsome tackler that Woodson. But Woodson was hardly a wimp, and he didn’t play safety — where slobberknockers are a bigger part of the job description — until the last five of his 17 seasons.
Woodson was faster than Lott. Woodson finished second to sprinting legend Darrell Green in a 1988 TV competition to determine “the NFL’s fastest man.” Woodson qualified for the 1984 Olympic trials as a 19-year-old college sophomore.
Chuck Noll, a tough guy’s tough guy, deemed Woodson to be plenty tough in 1987. It sounded so strange to hear Noll say it before he drafted the Purdue All-American, but he said it:
“I’m in love with Rod Woodson.”
Woodson could lay the wood as needed — often enough, he recovered fumbles he caused. His calling card, though, was hitting game plans like a brick wall. He took away one side of the field.
Sackmaster Bruce Smith, who joins Woodson in the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2009, recalls a standing theme when Buffalo was game-planning for Woodson’s Steelers:
“Don’t ever throw the ball near Rod Woodson.”
Woodson owns one of those DiMaggio-style records, in his case interception returns for touchdowns. He did it 12 times — seven as a cornerback, five as a safety.
Green, a cornerback who beat Woodson to Canton by a year, returned six picks for TDs.
Even the great ones get beat. Woodson never forgot getting worked by aging Joe Montana on a fourth-and-9 play that led to Kansas City beating the Steelers in a 1993 playoff game.
Whatever the imperfections, though, no one thought there would be a waiting period for Woodson to get into the Hall of Fame. There wasn’t. He will be inducted Saturday at Fawcett Stadium.
‘Always around the ball’
Back to the question. Woodson or Lott?
Webster Slaughter, named by Woodson as a wideout who gave him trouble, faced both of the Hall-of-Fame defensive backs.
“Rod Woodson was a better cornerback than Ronnie Lott,” Slaughter says now. “Ronnie Lott was a better safety than Rod Woodson.”
The opinion traces to an era when Slaughter and the Browns owned the Steelers but Woodson was emerging as a star. He went on to play on three Super Bowl teams.
Woodson is indelibly etched on the memory of Chris Palmer, who faced Woodson as an offensive coach with the Houston Oilers, a quarterbacks coach with the Patriots, an offensive coordinator with the Jaguars and a head coach with the Browns.
Palmer had this standing advice for quarterbacks:
“Stay away from Woodson as much as you can. Every time you go over there, there’s danger.”
Warren Moon should have listened. The Oilers were coming off an AFC Central title season in which Moon passed for 4,690 yards when they dug in for their 1992 season opener against Pittsburgh.
Woodson intercepted Moon twice — and scored twice. It was the difference in a 29-24 Steelers win.
“He could disrupt a game very easily,” said Palmer, who was with the Oilers that day. “He was always around the ball. Some people don’t give him credit for his toughness. He was very tough.”
Another former head coach, Cincinnati’s Sam Wyche, called Woodson “the best punt returner I’ll ever see.”
In a 1992 game at Kansas City, Woodson opened the scoring with an 80-yard punt return for a touchdown. Bill Cowher, the Chiefs’ defensive coordinator in 1991, had just become Woodson’s head coach.
A tight family
From the time he was a teenager in Indiana, anyone could see Woodson was a special athlete. But how well did anyone know him?
In Tampa last winter, after Woodson was elected to the Hall of Fame, he alluded to his youth as “a nappy-haired kid in Fort Wayne.” He didn’t get into the complexities.
He was the youngest of three brothers born to a father, James, who was black, and a mother, Linda Jo, who was white. Rod’s early notoriety as a great athlete was one reason the family was an easy target by both black and white racists.
Woodson told Sports Illustrated:
“When you are mixed, you have three options: stay in the middle, pick a side or stand on your own. My parents let me know I didn’t have to pick a side, because I always had a friend in the family.
“There is nothing good in the streets for a young kid. I never knew who my true friends were, so I had to stick with my own. The only people I knew who were mixed, like me, were my brothers, and that made us a very close and protective family.”
He began playing football because his older brothers did.
He was a force as a junior on a Snider High School team that reached Indiana’s state title game. He was a state championship hurdler. He was a basketball star in a basketball state.
Purdue is 103 miles from Snider High School. Woodson opted to stay close to home.
“His NFL career didn’t surprise me,” former Purdue coach Leon Burtnett told the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel this year. “He was the most dominant player I ever coached in 45 years, and I coached a few who made it to the Hall of Fame.”
Purdue was 18-27-1 in Woodson’s four years as a starter, but NFL scouts had no trouble spotting Woodson in that rubble. One of the best, George Saimes, recalls the book on Woodson:
“He had excellent size and really good speed for his size. And he was such an athletic guy. I remember that his personality was a little different.”
A steal at No. 10
Tony Dungy coached Steelers defensive backs in 1987. Like Noll, Dungy loved Woodson, but Noll told him he would be gone well before Pittsburgh’s pick at No. 10 overall.
“We thought Rod was certainly going to be a top-five pick,” Dungy says now.
The No. 5 overall pick, which lives in infamy in Cleveland, was linebacker Mike Junkin. The Steelers did indeed land Woodson at No. 10. He gave them 10 mostly sensational years.
They were not great team years. With Noll as Woodson’s head coach, the Steelers went 8-7, 5-11, 9-7 and 7-9. In Woodson’s early years under Cowher, the Steelers went 11-5, 9-7 and 11-5, losing twice in the first round of the playoffs and once in the AFC title game.
At that point, Woodson already was on the 75th-anniversary team but hadn’t played in a Super Bowl. He finally got there the next season— the hard way. He blew out a knee in the regular-season opener. In a testament to his toughness, he became the first NFL player to make it back from a major knee injury suffered during the same season.
But he made it back for just one game, Super Bowl XXX, and it was a bittersweet comeback. He was limited to nickel and dime duty in the sub package. The Steelers fell to Dallas, 27-17.
Reflecting on that game five years later, Woodson said, “Yeah, I participated in a Super Bowl, but I never really played in one.”
He said so a few days before playing in Super Bowl XXXV, in his third year as a Baltimore Raven, his second after moving to from cornerback to safety. He had been brought in to help turn raw young talent into a team. The results were stunning.
Five years after Art Modell moved the franchise from Cleveland, it won a world championship. Woodson captained a defense that allowed 10 or fewer points in 15 of 20 games, including all four in the postseason.
The Super Bowl, a 34-7 rout of the Giants, was such a breeze that the Ravens were chilling out as the final minutes ticked away.
“On the sideline,” Woodson said, “I looked at Ray Lewis and said, ‘I wear a size 12 ring. I wonder if Mr. Modell is going to put any extra bling on it.’ ”
There isn’t much sparkle in the remembrance among Cleveland fans who were robbed of their team. But don’t blame Woodson. He was just doing his job.
Has there ever been a defensive back with a stronger body of work?
