Note: The following appears in the LSU football gameday program.
The term “hidden yardage” in football often refers to the small, overlooked details like penalties, clock management errors or mental mistakes that quietly decide games. While touchdowns, deep passes and explosive tackles dominate highlight reels, unremarkable moments like blocked kicks or holding calls often determine the difference between a roaring crowd and eerily pained silence.
Similarly, “hidden yardage” in daily life, like small choices, justifications or commitments, can be the difference between success and mediocrity. For Tiger defensive tackle Peter Woods, mastering these mighty monotonies have been the focus of his training this offseason.
After the Tigers played their final game in the College Football Playoff last December, Woods adopted this adage to symbolize the “little things” he wanted to perfect ahead of his junior season. Unlike the caused fumbles or sacks Woods notched in his first two seasons wearing orange and purple, the veteran’s commitment to small habits may never make a headline or viral social media post. Still, he believes that excelling in everyday tasks and mastering the monotonous is the foundation for greatness.
“You always want to find something that can set you apart, something that’s going to give you an edge or competitive advantage,” said #11. “If you’re doing everything that everybody’s doing, you’re going to be the same person that everybody is. We call it ‘hidden yardage,’ the little things that you can do that don’t look big, but will get you yards.”
In his sophomore season, a leg injury sidelined the Alabaster, Ala. native for three games in September, and a head injury cost him time again two months later. For the first time in his decade-long football career, Woods’ ability to help his team was ripped from his control as he was forced to watch four games from the action’s periphery.
Though he recovered to finish the season with 32 tackles, 8.5 tackles for loss, three sacks and a caused fumble, Woods believes his conditioning after the injuries held him back from peak performance.
“Everybody likes to say I had a good season or even a great season, but if I’d been in better shape, being a self-critic, I would have met all my goals.”
After the end of the season, Head Coach Dabo Swinney approached Woods with a charge to increase the number of high-level snaps he could play in each game, which would require large improvements in endurance and conditioning. Without question, Woods embraced the challenge. He swiftly shed more than 15 pounds through diet tweaks, extra work in the weight room and the support of his teammates and coaches in the seven months between the season’s end and the Tigers’ annual fall camp.
This dedication to small changes paid off tangibly. By Clemson’s annual weigh-in this August, Woods was down to 307 pounds, his lightest since arriving on campus in 2023.
“He looks totally different than he did last year at this time and in every aspect, physically and mentally,” said Swinney at a press conference to open fall camp. “He’s in a good spot.”
One of his biggest influences through the process was Defensive Tackles Coach and Co-Defensive Coordinator Nick Eason, a former NFL lineman and seasoned coach at multiple levels who lost more than 100 pounds during his first two years as an assistant coach at Clemson in order to lead by example.
“Coach Eason has been a great inspiration to me, sharing that similar journey of trying to hone in on what we want our body to look like to be the best version of ourselves.
“I’ve taken a lot of advice from him, including dietary advice, but also mental advice, because a lifestyle change like that can take a toll on you, training your body and showing that self-control that you probably haven’t had to display. He’s been a real inspiration to me even outside of that, being a guy who you can lean on outside of football and having that expertise in the game as well as playing the game on every level. That’s awesome.”
The mentorship and accountability from both Eason and Swinney was a large part of Woods’ initial commitment to Clemson in 2022. After leading Thompson High School to four consecutive state championships and landing as ESPN’s No. 9 overall prospect in the 2023 class, Woods received offers from over 30 programs, each offering a chance to develop his talent on the field.
In the end, however, he chose Clemson for convictions that went far beyond football.
“This place is about serving your heart and not your talent,” explained Woods. “That’s why we have such high retention. We keep our players, we graduate our players and that goes to show that we do things differently.”
That “different” culture also boasts a high level of accountability, a trait that Woods calls “rare” in today’s college athletics landscape.
“Coach Swinney has also held me to a standard where maybe sometimes my talent at other places would allow me to get away with things that aren’t necessarily our standard. But because he was serving my heart and not my talent, he held me accountable for those things, and in return made me a better man. I thank this culture for that and I don’t know if I would have been able to find that somewhere else.”
Now after learning to handle losses for the first time in his football life as a freshman, battling injuries as a sophomore and reshaping his body before year No. 3, Woods enters 2025 strapped with newfound maturity, habits and leadership abilities. During the 2025 preseason, he earned All-America honors, a First-Team All-ACC nod and spots on six national awards watch lists, including for the Bednarik and Nagurski Awards as the nation’s top defensive player.
Despite national attention and large-scale praise, however, Woods insists his focus remains small.
For him, it is still all about the hidden yardage, the little things that make big moments and accolades possible.
