'It makes you anxious': How Jelani Woods' second season turned into a redshirt year

INDIANAPOLIS - The 2023 Colts season came and went, and Jelani Woods played a grand total of zero snaps.

Nobody is more shocked than Woods himself. After all, he's the one looking at one of the most athletic tight end bodies in NFL history and asking, "Why?"

Two hamstrings stopped working at different times -- the left in August, the right in November. Injuries that were only supposed to take a few weeks of recovery time instead stole all 17 games of a potential breakout second season.

“It was very difficult, honestly," Woods said. "At first, I didn’t know what I can do, what not to do, how much intensity I should put in or emphasize how much I should relax. It’s new feelings every time I do something.

"The way my injury was, it kept getting worse and worse every single time. I’d back off and then I’d feel good again, and I’m like, ‘OK.’ They’d put me through tests and I’d do really good. But then something would happen with a setback again, and it was a repeating factor over time.”

It started for Woods back in August, when he first pulled his left hamstring and had to miss a couple weeks. He tried to do some light work to accelerate a return for the regular season and aggravated that pull, so the Colts shut him down for four games by moving him to injured reserve.

In Week 3, they cleared him for some conditioning ahead of a potential Week 4 practice and Week 5 return. But he had another setback on the left hamstring.

By the end of Week 8, he felt like he was close to a breakthrough. The Colts wanted him to build up again with hopes that he could make the trip to Germany. He went into training on a Sunday morning, the day the Colts played the Panthers, and he pulled the right hamstring.

That's when the bye week hit and Woods felt like he had to try something different. He left the facility to see a specialist to check out his lower body in full.

What they saw left them surprised.

"They were telling me, ‘We don’t know how you were playing last year when you were like this. You were very out of whack,’” Woods said.

MORE:10 thoughts on the Colts' 2023 season and where to go with Anthony Richardson and Shane Steichen

The specialist noticed an uneven amount of power and mass in specific muscles between his left and right side. When Woods would hit full speeds of a 40-yard dash in 4.61 seconds, placing him in the top 7% of all tight end prospects since 1987, he was stressing the hips working in overdrive on this growing, uneven body that stretches 6-foot-7 and 253 pounds.

Woods realized he'd focused too much on rehabbing his hamstrings and quads when the glutes and hips needed the real restructuring. That has become his focus ever since the meeting with the specialist. It's how his Year 2 went from a delayed start to a redshirt year.

“'Get healthy,'" coach Shane Steichen said he told Woods. "That’s the biggest thing: Get healthy, and then we’ll see where it goes.”

This experience gave Woods a new way to understand a tight end body that ranked in the top 5% in NFL history in height, vertical jump, broad jump and the 10- and 20-yard splits. It's going to transform his offseason, which he said will be a mix of building these core foundational movements with the fire that comes from missing out on his team's push for the AFC South title.

When that body has been on the field, it's looked electric. As a third-round rookie last season, Woods made it through 15 games with a rotating group of quarterbacks and offensive play callers. He averaged 12.5 yards on 25 receptions and tallied 16 first downs on a strong 7.8 yards per target.

It's something the Colts could have used this season. As they found a way to finish No. 11 in points while playing primarily with a backup quarterback, they had to patch production together at tight end. The group finished with 883 yards, with no player amassing more than 368.

“I just know how fun it was going to be," Woods said. "That made it worse throughout the year — if I was able to do this or if I was able to get in on this. It makes you anxious. You keep going high and low throughout the season."

But hope for the future remains high. Woods knows what he's capable of, and he can dream of fitting in with Anthony Richardson's electric arm on play-action to Jonathan Taylor with the play designs that Steichen can scheme up.

Those dreams must fuel his most important offseason yet.

"It’s going to be very exciting," Woods said. "I have a big point to prove and a big statement to make.

"I have so much balled up in me right now that I can’t wait to show the world.”

Contact Nate Atkins at natkins@indystar.com. Follow him on Twitter @NateAtkins_.