How Seahawks’ Riq Woolen separates himself from other big CBs

By many accounts, Seattle Seahawks cornerback Riq Woolen shined Wednesday during the team’s joint practice with the Tennessee Titans.

What Wyman saw at Seattle Seahawks’ joint practice with Titans

Plenty of videos surfaced throughout the day of Woolen, a third-year pro out of Texas-San Antonio, locking down wide receivers in one-one-one drills. A few of those came against Titans wideout Calvin Ridley Jr., who signed a four-year, $92 million contract during the offseason.

Ridley had praise for Woolen afterwards.

“He’s pretty good,” Ridley said. “He’s tall as crap. Tall, long arms. I mean that’s a pretty good corner, man. Looks like he’s fast, too. So, pretty good day. Pretty good.’’

Woolen’s performance also caught the attention of Senior Bowl director Jim Nagy.

“6-foot-3 corners shouldn’t be able to decelerate like this,” Nagy posted on social media. “Said it three years ago when he was coming out of college, (Riq Woolen) is rare!”

The word “decelerate” stood out in particular to former NFL quarterback Brock Huard, who delved into how the 6-foot-4 Woolen separates himself from other long, rangy cornerbacks during Blue 88 on Brock and Salk.

“You got long arms and you’re fast linearly, but I need you horizontal and I need you to accelerate and then I need you … (to) decelerate,” Huard said. “Can you decelerate and get in and out of the stuff the way you need to? Big guys have a hard time doing that.”

Huard thought back to the cornerbacks the Seahawks have featured dating back to the Legion of Boom era, when Richard Sherman and Brandon Browner locked down the outside with their size and speed. Seattle tried to use other players with similar body types, at times converting safeties to corner, but most never stuck due to not having enough lateral quickness or ability to decelerate.

Former Seahawk Tharold Simon, a 6-foot-2 corner Seattle selected in the fifth round of the 2013 draft, was a player Huard used as an example.

“(He) just couldn’t do it, just couldn’t turn the feet over quick enough, just didn’t have the lateral quickness getting in and out of the cut,” Huard said.

Wide receiver DK Metcalf is also a good example of a big-bodied skill position player with elite speed but not as much ability to change direction.

“We watch that with DK running routes. DK is a power runner,” Huard said. “… Those guys have a hard time stopping that power. Can he do what Jaxon (Smith-Njigba) and Tyler (Lockett) do with change of direction? By no means. Does Riq Woolen do a lot of the Jaxon-and-Tyler, change-of-direction stuff with having that long leverage acceleration? He does.

“If he can put it together and get back to that form from his rookie year, that would help this season immensely.”

Listen to the full conversation at this link or in the audio player near the top of this story. Tune in to Brock and Salk weekdays from 6-10 a.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app.

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