Colby
Wooden.
Colby
Wooden.
Auburn· 6'4"· 273 lb· 4.79s 40
"Green Bay drafted a sub-package rusher and ended up with a run-down starter: the sacks never arrived, but the length, the gap discipline and the motor eventually turned a fourth-round flier into a real answer."Pre-draft read
Wooden is a 6-4, 273-pound hybrid interior rusher who played everywhere from 3-technique to base 5-tech in Auburn's even fronts, and his game opens with get-off and hand quickness rather than mass. He fires low out of a three-point stance, snatches the near shoulder and works half-man leverage to squeeze the B-gap.
Against the run he is a disciplined gap player who keeps his frame clean and sheds late instead of absorbing double teams — a stack-and-shed defender, not a two-gap anchor. The pass-rush plan stays basic and there is no bend to fall back on once the first move dies. The signature is relentlessness: he chased plays to the sideline and knocked three balls loose as a senior.
Even-front, one-gap 4-3 or nickel-heavy scheme that lets him attack a single gap upfield instead of reading and reacting off blocks.
Year 1: rotational 3-tech with sub-package reduction snaps. Ceiling: three-down interior starter who plays 55% of snaps and keeps the run game honest.
A two-gap 3-4 that asks him to read-and-shed a center or hold the point against double teams — he sheds late and gets displaced when he has to catch blocks.
His value climbs the more the front lets him move and the fewer times he has to stay square.
Colby Wooden: Auburn DL 2020 Highlights
Breakout 2020 season reel: get-off, hand quickness and B-gap penetration from the 3-technique.
Auburn Colby Wooden Highlights
Senior-year cut-ups showing the long-arm, the sideline chase and the strip attempts that produced three forced fumbles.
Rock Report: Cookin' with Colby
Packers feature from 2025, the season he took over as Green Bay's starting interior run defender.
Wooden reads better on tape than on the stat sheet: a long, athletic front-four piece with real positional flex, comfortable reducing inside on passing downs and holding the edge of the box on early downs. He is not a nose tackle and not a stand-up edge; he is a movable fourth or fifth man in a rotation, and that flexibility is his ticket.
The production curve is honest and upward. He broke through in 2020 with 42 tackles, 9.5 tackles for loss and 4.0 sacks in eleven games, added 61 tackles as a full-time starter in 2021, then closed with 45 tackles, 11.5 for loss, 6.0 sacks and three forced fumbles, earning SEC Defensive Lineman of the Week twice across those seasons. The flag is the shape of the rush: heavy on effort and heavy hands, light on counters.
Boards landed him in the fifth-round range across more than a hundred public mocks — a rotational body with a functional 4.79 forty and 23 bench reps who tested like the player the tape showed. Green Bay took him at 116, a round early by consensus, betting on the length, the flex and the SEC rep count rather than the sack production.
- 01
Get-off
Fires out of a three-point stance with a genuinely quick first step for a 273-pound interior player, forcing guards to open early and reach.
- 02
Hand strength
Snatches and rips the near shoulder with real grip power, dislodging the blocker's inside hand before the punch lands clean.
- 03
Positional flex
Played 3-technique, 4i and base 5-tech at Auburn, giving a defensive coordinator a chess piece across four different fronts.
- 04
Motor
Chases to the sideline and finishes at the ball; three forced fumbles as a senior all came from plays he had no business reaching.
- 05
SEC production trend
Improved every year against the best offensive lines in the country, closing with 11.5 tackles for loss and 6.0 sacks as a senior.
- 01
Pass-rush plan
Wins with the first move or not at all; the long-arm and club-swim are real, but the counter off a stalled rush barely exists on tape.
- 02
Anchor
Gets moved off the spot by double teams and down blocks; he sheds rather than holds, which caps his early-down snaps at true nose.
- 03
Bend
Stiff through the ankles and hips, so pressure often arrives late and wide instead of at the quarterback's front foot.
- 04
Finishing production
Never cleared 6.0 sacks in a season despite heavy snap counts, a gap between disruption and results that followed him to the league.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.79sp50
- Vertical
- —in
- Broad jump
- 115inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- 4.52sp50
- Bench
- 23repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Auburn | 11 | 42 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2021 | Auburn | 13 | 61 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 2022 | Auburn | 12 | 45 | 6 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
| Career | — | 36 | 148 | 15 | 0 | 6 | 3 |
Verified against cfbstats.com Auburn player pages for 2020-2022; seasons sum exactly to the career line. His 2019 true-freshman cameo (4 tackles) is excluded because cfbstats has no 2019 page for him and sources disagree on games played; adding those 4 tackles reconciles to the 152 career tackles listed by Auburn's own athletics site. Fumble recoveries by season were not verifiable and are left null rather than zero-filled.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Honors
- 2x SEC Defensive Lineman of the Week (2021, 2022)
- Preseason All-SEC (2022)
- Bednarik Award Watch List (2022)
Rotational interior defender who becomes a starter when injuries or trades open the door, then holds the job on effort.
Same movable base-end-to-3-tech body, same value built on gap discipline and snap count rather than sack production.
Length and flex without a finishing plan, drifting between rotational snaps and roster bubble as the pass rush never arrives.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Green Bay used him exactly as the profile suggested. He appeared in all 17 games as a rookie in 2023 with 15 tackles and half a sack, purely as a rotational body behind an established front. The 2024 season was the flat one — 13 games, 19 tackles, no sacks, snaps that came and went with the game script. Everything changed in 2025: with Kenny Clark shipped to Dallas in the Micah Parsons deal, Wooden slid inside and started 16 games as the Packers' primary interior run defender, posting 48 tackles while playing through a shoulder issue that briefly knocked him out of the Carolina game in November. In March 2026 Green Bay traded him to Indianapolis for linebacker Zaire Franklin, and he enters the season as a starting-caliber defensive tackle on a $1.145 million cap number with free agency waiting in 2027.
In hindsight the fourth-round price looks right, just not for the reason it was paid. Green Bay drafted a sub-package rusher and got a run-down starter — the sack production that scouts hoped would eventually catch up to the hurries never did, but the length, gap discipline and durability turned him into a real answer once the depth chart opened. Being the return in a trade for an established starting linebacker is its own grade: three years in, he is a functional, movable NFL starter drafted where teams normally shop for special teams and depth.