“It’s cool, because even though you are on different teams, it is still like a brotherhood because you stay connected,” he said. “And just seeing Darius Slay and Micah Parsons and different players like Trevon Diggs and stuff like that reach out, it’s cool because you are actually turning heads out here.”
Other than appreciating that acknowledgment from some of the league’s elite defensive players, Woolen doesn’t feel like much has changed.
“I mean I just stay level-headed,” he said. “You never really get too high or too low. You just got to be the same person through it all.”
But getting back to Sherman’s early advice to Woolen, what happens when the inevitable bumps in the road come up? Well, having Sherman as a resource will certainly help, but more than anything Woolen and his coaches are banking that his laid-back demeanor—the one some teams brought up as a criticism at the NFL scouting combine—will help him keep his cool, just as it is currently helping on a play-to-play basis, while also helping him avoid the trappings of buying into his early hype.
“Some people don’t like the fact that he is laid back,” defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt said. “I think part of the reason why he doesn’t panic when the ball is in the air, what a lot of DBs do, they start throwing their head all over the place and they grab and hold. It’s because they get frantic. I think the laid-back personality, the cool confidence that he has, you see it in his play as well. That’s not always a negative.
“You better have amnesia because you are going to get beat sometimes. On his very first throw at him in professional football, he got beat for a touchdown on a mistake (in the preseason opener). If you get a guy who kind of over the top, highly emotional in that position, you don’t know how he is going to respond. He just put it behind him and kept pushing forward. You have to have amnesia. Things are going to happen sometimes, people are going to catch the football. There are great receivers in this league, great quarterbacks in this league, so bad stuff will happen from time to time. The test to me of the character and how great he can be is how do you rebound off of that? I think that is a great trait for him to have.”
Woolen wasn’t always as even-keeled on the field as he is now, particularly when he played receiver before UTSA’s then head coach, Frank Wilson, suggested a position change.
“In college, in my early years when I was a receiver, that’s what it kind of was like, up and down,” Woolen said. “As I got older, in my senior year of college, it just went ahead and started to (even out) a little bit because you start to understand why coaches do what they do and you start to understand yourself and you self-evaluate like, ‘ok, this is what I can do, and this is what I need to work on’, and stuff like that. And then now, it just carried on through here and I just try to be chill about everything, stay calm, and just keep a positive mindset through it all.”
With that positive mindset, not to mention some outstanding play and freakish athletic ability, Woolen has exceeded just about everyone’s expectations for what he would do as a rookie, except perhaps his own.
“I know that hard work never goes unnoticed and if you just keep coming to work, keep doing what you are doing, and are willing to get better, something great is willing to happen,” he said. “I’m just making strides in the right direction and I’m just keeping a positive mind frame. I stay a positive person no matter how bad things get, so I just try to have a positive mindset, and knowing that having that mindset and knowing that you will get better, the sky is the limit.”
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