CLEMSON – Todd Woodaz had only been gone for a few seconds when he heard his son calling from the living room.

“Dad, Dad, come back!’ his son Wade Woodaz said last Saturday around 12:30 p.m. “I’m getting a call!”

As it turned out, the call, marked by a Houston area code, was worth coming back for. Within seconds of the first ring, Texans’ general manager Nick Caserio was on the line, letting Wade know that he would be selected with the No. 123 pick in the 2026 NFL Draft.

Before he could muster the words to call his dad back to the room, or pick up the receiver, Woodaz showed his brother, Drew, and mother, Shannon, his phone with a cautious smile. His stomach plummeted as if it had been locked in a form tackle as he brought the phone to his ear and managed a “Hello?”.

“This is real, this is really happening,” Woodaz said to The Clemson Insider on Thursday, while reflecting on his initial reaction. “I talked to their GM at first, and then coach DeMeco (Ryans) was the second one. And then I talked to the owner, and then they told me they’re like, ‘Watch the pick, and then we’ll call you after.’” 

As promised, Woodaz was selected minutes later with the 23rd pick in the fourth round, making him the seventh former Clemson player selected out of a record-tying nine picks. He was the fourth defender taken and the third true senior.

While Woodaz had spoken to Texans staffers at the NFL Combine in February, and in the days closely following, he had not heard from any Houston coaches or personnel in over a month leading up to his selection.

“I talked to them at the Combine, and then for like a week, two weeks, after I met with them, I met probably two or three times with the ‘backers coach and their scouting director, but they’ve been pretty quiet ever since then,” he said. “You got to think that’s like early March. So, I hadn’t heard from them since early March, so dang near two months.”

Despite not hearing from the Texans, in which he talked to eight teams weekly in March and April, something specific stood out about Ryans and his staff. While other teams were quizzing the Tampa, Fla., native on schematics, inducing assessments at the end of each call, Houston staffers wanted to get to know Woodaz outside of football.

“Now, obviously, hindsight is 2020, but just the way they operate is different than a lot of other teams,” Woodaz said. “They were just trying to get to know me, and it seems like their approach to scouting and the draft process is that they want to get the right guys in the room.

“At the end of the day, you got to get everybody moving in the same direction. You can teach football. You can’t teach the soft skills.”

Some of those icebreaker-ish questions used to verify soft skills, Woodaz said, were about his family. Others were about his upbringing and playing sports growing up. Then, as the call carried on, they got deeper.

“How did you handle this past season?” staffers asked Woodaz about Clemson’s disappointing 7-6 finish.

“What’s your leadership style? How do you connect with guys on your team?” they continued.

Woodaz’ answers must have stuck with the corps, as they used their one of their fourth-round picks on the former Clemson veteran who racked up 28.5 tackles for loss and nine sacks over his four-year career with the Tigers. He was the second defensive player and the first of two linebackers taken by Houston.

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney believes the Texans made a smart decision, on and off the field.

“That’s going to be one lucky linebacker coach, they will love this guy,” Swinney said of Woodaz. “He shows up as the same guy every day. He’s an incredible preparer week-in and week-out. He knows how to take care of his body and will be a great player for a long time.”

Since his selection, in accordance with Swinney’s diagnosis, Woodaz has taken next steps to prepare for his professional career. Within the week, he has looked for apartments in the Houston area, lined up meetings with the special teams coaches, and talked to the player personnel staff about the logistics of moving to a new city and starting his NFL career. 

He also made the decision to wear No. 30 for the Texans, after wearing No. 17 for the duration of his college career.

“It’s a weight lifted off my shoulders now,” he said. “I can just talk now to one team. For a couple of months there it was like, I was talking to eight teams a week. So, I don’t have to do that any more, which is pretty nice.” 

While Woodaz did not grow up a committed Texans fan, or a die-hard supporter of any team for that matter, he posted a picture, circa Christmas Day 2012, to social media Saturday night that made everything seem full-circle.

In the picture, standing in front of his family’s Christmas tree, surrounded by his parents, sister, and brother, an elementary-aged Woodaz is wearing a Texans jersey that he received that morning. The jersey was five-time pro-bowler J.J. Watt’s, one of Woodaz’ favorite players growing up.

The caption on the picture, aptly, reads, “Maybe it was just fate.”

Maybe it was fate for the linebacker to join the No. 1 total defense in the NFL last season. Maybe it was fate for him to happen to ask for a J.J. Watt jersey long before he dialed in on playing professional football. Maybe it was fate that an old family picture and the call that changed everything for Woodaz all took place in the same living room.

Regardless of the cosmic or symbolic reasons, Woodaz now has a chance to play professional football, something he dreamed of since watching his favorite players on Sundays. His journey will start next week, when he boards a final flight out of Clemson into his new home.

“Honestly, I can’t wait to get there, I wish I was there right now,” he said.