Unlike in baseball, Pro Football Hall of Fame enshrinees don’t have to declare a team, and for Charles Woodson it would be an unenviable task on Sunday. Both the Oakland Raiders and Green Bay Packers defined his legacy, as he did theirs, in his eight seasons with the Raiders, seven with the Packers and then three more with the Raiders.
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Khalil Mack was a rookie with the Raiders in 2014 and hung on every word Woodson said.
“C-Wood was just a cool dude, man,” Mack said in a phone interview last week. “Laid-back, but when he talked, you made sure you were listening. It was a big deal to be out there on the field with him and to be on the same team with him after seeing him on TV all those years.”
A Heisman Trophy winner at Michigan because he made highlight reels playing both defense and offense, Woodson helped the Raiders become winners and the Packers become champions.
“I think he’s the most talented guy that I ever played with,” Aaron Rodgers said in November. “His ability to impact the game was unbelievable. He for sure made me a better player going against him every day in practice. He’s one of the most savvy defensive players that I’ve ever seen on the field. Incredible ability to diagnose routes in real time, fantastic in his disguise.”
And he was fast, much quicker in the games than in any workout.
“Some people were just born to play the game,” Mack said. “He knew what to expect from studying, and he was fast enough mentally and physically in the moment to do something you wouldn’t expect someone to do.
“One of the first things out of his mouth that I really related to was that when he was on the field, he felt like he could make every play. His mindset separated him from everybody else.”
Drafted by the Raiders with the No. 4 pick in 1998, Woodson used that mindset to win defensive rookie of the year and was a first-team All-Pro selection in 1999 and 2001. The 2001 playoff loss to the Patriots via the Tuck Rule — Woodson came on a cornerback blitz and clearly knocked the ball loose with the hit on Tom Brady, but it wasn’t ruled a fumble — helped launch Brady into a title-winning “Groundhog Day” movie and Raiders coach Jon Gruden and Woodson on eventual paths elsewhere to find glory.
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“If they make the correct call — which they did at first, then they overturned it — this (10)-game playoff streak that Tom Brady has? It never happened,” Woodson said in 2014. “Tom Brady owes me his house. I’m the reason why he’s married to who he’s married to. I’m a reason for a lot of that. Everything. Because they overturned that call.”
How would the trajectory of Charles Woodson’s and Tom Brady’s careers change if this play remained a fumble? (Matt Campbell / AFP / Getty Images)
Gruden was traded to the Buccaneers a month later and Woodson lasted four seasons longer before the Raiders let him walk in free agency, eventually landing with the Packers.
“I think the move to Green Bay cemented Charles’ Hall of Fame status,” said Reggie McKenzie, the Packers’ former pro personnel director and Raiders’ former general manager, in a phone interview Sunday. “He was locked in and he went to another level in his mindset.”
McKenzie, now a senior personnel director for the Miami Dolphins who was with the Packers in 2006 when Woodson signed with Green Bay and with the Raiders in 2013 when he returned to Oakland, couldn’t believe more teams weren’t in on Woodson when the Raiders let him walk in free agency after he missed most of the 2005 season with a broken leg.
But when he thought about it, it did make some sense. Woodson was approaching 30, coming off an injury and there was baggage.
“There were a lot of rumors going around about Charles at the time,” McKenzie said. “Some of the Raiders coaches were a little sour about some of his work habits, and while Charles had a good time, he always showed up on Sundays. At the end of the day, you watch him on tape and the talent jumps off the screen and you have to go with your gut and not what you hear.”
“I got after it on and off the field, as a young man is supposed to do,” Woodson said in a recent phone interview.
In arguably his best move behind drafting Rodgers with the No. 24 pick in 2005, late former Packers general manager Ted Thompson and McKenzie swooped in to pluck Woodson from the free-agent market. Signing Woodson to a seven-year, $52 million contract was an uncharacteristic move by Thompson, who rarely threw money around for external free agents. This was an exception, however, and a stroke of genius, even if Woodson was apprehensive.
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“The talk is always, ‘This is no place for a Black man, and that’s just how it was,’” Woodson said in 2008 before the NFC Championship Game. “And you get all those reports from people who’ve played here, and those were the thoughts going through my mind when Green Bay kept calling.
“Every time I talked to my agent, when I’m asking about all these other teams, he’s saying, ‘Well, they haven’t said anything, but Green Bay called again, so what do you want to do?’ And it was almost like this is where I had to play. You know, either come to Green Bay or just sit at home and just continue to wait.”
“I got in with him and his agent and kept selling him to our staff,” McKenzie said. “It was a big deal and a long process because we have never pursued a high-caliber player like that since way back with Reggie White before I got there. We just didn’t dabble in free agency much.
“And Charles definitely wasn’t feeling it at first. But I think the consistent persistence paid off, and on his visit, we told him he would be a major part of what we were doing on defense, and would be a key piece in trying to get back to the Super Bowl.”
Woodson played for the Packers from 2006 to 2012 and made four consecutive Pro Bowls from 2008 to 2011, four consecutive All-Pro teams in the same span (two first teams, two second), earned NFL defensive player of the year honors in 2009, twice led the league in interceptions (2009 and ’11) and won a Super Bowl ring in the 2010 season.
Not bad for someone who many teams considered injury-prone and washed up.
Woodson intercepted eight passes, returned one for a touchdown and forced three fumbles in his first season with the Packers coming off that broken leg. He missed just three games over the next five seasons after missing 22 in the four seasons prior to signing with Green Bay, picking off a whopping 29 passes in that span, returning eight of them for touchdowns, forcing 11 fumbles and racking up nine sacks, while serving as the primary punt returner for his first two seasons with the Packers.
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“Charles took the bull by the horns and wanted to remind everybody who he was,” McKenzie said. “Some people are smart, but Charles is smart, cunning, competitive and confident. When you have all that working for you and you have skill, shoot …”
Most players are trained to handle their assignments, be in the right gap and don’t try to do too much. Woodson is not most players.
“If he saw something, he would drop whatever responsibilities he had and try and go make a play,” McKenzie said. “Three out of four times he was right. Quarterbacks would try to outsmart him, but Charles usually came out on top.”
Woodson broke his collarbone right before halftime of the Packers’ Super Bowl win over the Steelers in February 2011. Ironically enough, the injury came as he broke up a pass. He hoisted the Lombardi Trophy with his right hand only as his left arm rested in a sling, a fitting image for Woodson’s Packers career, during which he delivered when it mattered most, even if he broke bones doing it.
Charles Woodson wouldn’t let a broken collarbone prevent him from hoisting the Lombardi Trophy. (Doug Pensinger / Getty Images)
“He’s a guy who had over 50 interceptions, over 20 sacks,” Rodgers said. “Did it all from Heisman to rookie of the year to the NFL defensive player of the year, won a championship, was a huge part of what we did in 2010 and became a fantastic leader in the locker room. … He had five interceptions his rookie year and five in his 18th year. That is unbelievable. Unbelievable. And a good friend. Just a fantastic player.”
Woodson again broke his collarbone shortly after his 36th birthday in 2012, the last season of his seven-year deal with the Packers. He stayed in for a play after the injury, then-defensive coordinator Dom Capers told the Associated Press after the game, which should come as no surprise. Woodson was playing safety, a testament to his versatility, when his season ended in Green Bay’s Week 7 win over the Rams.
The Packers opted not to re-sign Woodson in free agency after the season, and he instead returned home to the team that drafted him in 1998. Rodgers listed Woodson in a recent news conference as one of 12 veterans he thought had been mistreated or disrespected by the Packers’ front office on their way out of Green Bay.
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McKenzie was waiting with open arms, as were Raiders fans who stormed the team facility when Woodson came in for his visit.
“I thought he could still play, not only at corner but safety, and just let him fly around,” McKenzie said. “We could match him up against a tight end or running back, or even put him in the box. We tried to make it hard for teams to know where Charles was going to be at. I thought he had two or three good years left, and he did.
“He thought he had some unfinished business in Oakland, and it was the perfect way to put the exclamation point on his Hall of Fame career.”
The Raiders won seven games combined in Woodson’s first two seasons, then went 7-9 in 2015 before going 12-4 and making the playoffs the following season after his retirement
“I showed the young guys what it meant to be a Raider,” Woodson said. “Just like Willie Brown and George Atkinson showed me.”
Mack remembers one lesson particularly well.
“We went to London and we were getting our ass whooped by Miami,” Mack said, “and one play, I jogged. He said something after the play and gave me this look. Then we get back to the facility the next week, he sat down with me and he showed me the play on his iPad. ‘You’re better than this,’ he said. ‘Talent don’t mean shit. Potential don’t mean shit. Hustling to the ball makes good players great. Every play.’
“That moment definitely affected my football career.”
Woodson, even if he was no longer playing, helped set the stage for the team’s only winning season since 2002, but also helped Raiders fans deal with the team’s pending move from Oakland to Las Vegas. His “O” gesture to fans after big plays and on the sidelines his last two seasons was iconic and deeply meaningful to faithful fans.
“That’s all Wood right there,” McKenzie said.
Charles Woodson becames synonymous with Oakland and showed off his familiar “O” gesture at the Raiders’ final game at the Oakland Coliseum in 2019 before their move to Las Vegas. (Darren Yamashita / USA Today)
His last home game in 2015 had all the electricity of a playoff game, with the pregame ceremony, the fans chanting his name and the Raiders even calling a play for Woodson on offense. (He lost 3 yards on a reverse.)
“It was a surreal night, and we sent him out with a win,” Mack said.
Woodson made a speech to Oakland fans after the game, and his voice can still be heard. Literally.
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“I can’t limit his leadership to just when I played with him,” Raiders quarterback Derek Carr said last week. “He still is a leader to me. He still texts me. He still calls me. He’ll call me out and say, ‘Hey, do this.’ And he’ll still tell me when I’m doing a great job. The demand he’s put on my life as a quarterback and a leader of this organization, I think that he knew on his way out that Khalil and I were coming up as the leaders of the organization. Just what he’s always asked of us and demanded of us, he still does.”
Meanwhile, Woodson will also go down as one of the best Packers defenders of all time even if he played in Green Bay for just six and a half seasons. His versatility and playmaking ability, rarely found in today’s NFL, was just that good. He was an integral locker room presence, a vital piece en route to a Super Bowl championship and an outlier in how he revitalized his career for a franchise known more for shipping injury-prone veterans out instead of giving them another chance.
When Woodson returned to Green Bay during the 2019 season with a film crew, it seemed like he was still a member of the team. The way he interacted with the likes of Rodgers, former teammate Tramon Williams and star cornerback Jaire Alexander (who counts Woodson as his favorite player ever), not to mention Woodson looking like he could still play, resembled the guy who was perfect for Green Bay’s locker room when he reluctantly signed with the Packers over 13 years prior.
For Woodson and for an organization that needed someone like him, it’s a good thing he did.
“It was kind of rough at the beginning, because I really didn’t quite want to be there, and I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that I didn’t have anybody who wanted me on their team,” Woodson said in 2019 while speaking to Packers reporters after learning he’d be inducted into the team’s Hall of Fame. “And I was really sour about that, so it kind of dictated the way I interacted with a lot of people around there, really standoffish, got into some verbal arguments and things like that.
“When I look back on it, I kind of feel like it was my way of trying to get out of the situation. But I’m really glad I didn’t get out of it because it turned out the way it turned out.”
(Top photo: Ben Liebenberg / Associated Press)