#35 - Woody Green, RB, 1974. #16 pick.
One might argue that Woody could be rated lower, but he's a case study in bad luck, at least in his football career. It appears there were some judgment errors off the field that didn't help.
Podolak was winding down, and as we saw earlier Jeff Kinney wasn't panning out as an earlier first-round pick. So the Chiefs took a surefire pick with Woody Green, a two-time all-American who had come in 8th for the Heisman his senior year.
Woody took over the starting job in Week 4 for a declining Chiefs team, with mixed but promising results. He had two 100 yard game, including 146 yards in San Diego, but he also had a 30-carry game against the Giants that produced 66 yards. He got hit a lot, and finished his season in Week 12 with a collarbone injury. His first year produced 509 yards rushing.
He then spent his offseason in court facing charges (along with a Buffalo Bills player) of raping a 16 year-old girl. Lamar pulled out all the stops to help him, going to court in Oregon with him and convincing several Chiefs players (Lanier, Stenerud, Podolak) to provide character references for him even though Lanier acknowledged that he didn't really know Woody very well. Woody was found innocent roughly three weeks before the season started.
He came back as the Week 1 starter in 1975, but had a disappointing year. He posted two 100-yard games, but averaged 4+ ypc in only five of the 14 games and was part of a big platoon of running backs. He then came back in Year 3, and was looking good even though he was still splitting carries. In Week 6, though, he left a knee on the field and never played again.
The final tally was three years as the starter, mostly amidst a running back committee, and two of those years ended early in injury. There are references to him having "multiple knee injuries" in his NFL career, so maybe he was playing hurt a bit. He ended up producing just over 2,000 total yards from scrimmage.
Interesting trivia - Woody's three years in the NFL ended with 5-9 records every year.
After the NFL, he got himself in some trouble, doing time for burglary, but is apparently out and living amongst us again. Makes you wonder a little bit about that rape charge.
Here he is on the cover of Sports Illustrated before the whole collarbone/ rape/ knee/ burglary thing.
