From Armbister Park to seven tackles as a Seattle Seahawks cornerback in Super Bowl LX, Josh Jobe continues a legacy of football excellence in the Grove.
With braids and a smile, a young Josh Jobe could often be spotted walking the half block from his home on Washington Avenue to Armbrister Park, football in hand.
Depending on the day, Jobe was preparing to practice with the Coconut Grove Knight Rider Pop Warner championship team – or to run football drills with his dad.
That was back in the early 2000s, when Jobe was known as “Woogie” – not as the breakout Seattle Seahawks star he later became. Certainly not as the Super Bowl champion he is today.
Jobe, a Coconut Grove native, won his first Super Bowl ring on Sunday, Feb. 8 with the Seahawks after a stellar performance as defensive cornerback with seven tackles and one pass break-up in a defense-dominated game.
“I am just so proud of him,” his longtime friend and Miami mentor Matt Haggman said.
Haggman met Jobe 18 years ago after the two were matched by Big Brothers Big Sisters of Miami. Jobe was only nine years old at the time, living with his late aunt Barbara Williams who adopted him alongside seven of his siblings.
It’s a day Haggman says he’ll never forget. What impressed him most about Jobe at the time: “His spirit. His competitiveness, but also his real kindness.”
Jobe spent much of his young life in the Grove, where he attended George Washington Carver Elementary School, and where he was well known.
“You would walk around the neighborhood and everyone knew him,” recalled Haggman, a Miami journalist and writer known for his work at the Miami Herald, the Knight Foundation and the Beacon Council.
A lot of Jobe’s popularity could be chalked up to his success on the football field.
“He was a crowd favorite,” said Gale Nelson, president of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Miami. “He was entertaining to watch. And he was good.”
Nelson, a youth football coach himself, knew Jobe both as a little brother and as the young football persona “Woogie.” It was a nickname given to him by his father from the 1982 song “Planet Rock” by Afrika Bambaataa and The Soulsonic Force, Nelson said.
Jobe’s father, Reggie Donaldson, can also be credited with introducing him to the sport.
Jobe began playing at the age of four under the guidance of his dad who taught him routes and the rules of the game, according to an interview he did for Big Brothers Big Sisters. (Jobe and his father did not respond to interview requests for this story.)
Championship success found Jobe early on.
In 2010, Jobe attended the Pop Warner Championship with the Coconut Grove Knight Riders at the age of 12.
Haggman, who has been cheering for Jobe throughout his career, helped raise funds for the team and drove to Orlando to watch the game.
“The thing that really stood out about Josh was No. 1 – of course, he was always a very good athlete and a terrific football player – his determination to both be good and to cut his own path,” Haggman said.
And Jobe dreamed big, aspiring early on to take a shot at the NFL like the other Coconut Grove football stars who came before him.
”When Josh was a kid … there would be NFL guys all over the place,” Haggman said. “It didn’t feel like this crazy idea because neighbors down the street were playing in the NFL.”
He set his sights on playing at Christopher Columbus High School – an all-boys, private Catholic school known for producing football talent.
(Columbus counts Fernando Mendoza, the quarterback who just led Indiana University to its first College Football national championship, and University of Miami head football coach Mario Critobal among its alumni pool.)
But the journey was far from easy. “I had to overcome a lot of adversity,” Jobe said in a 2022 interview with Big Brothers Big Sisters.
Perseverance has been the defining trait of Jobe’s professional career.
Jobe went on to play for the University of Alabama, where he won a national championship in 2020 but also suffered an injury in the SEC Championship Game in his senior year.
Due in part to the injury, Jobe was passed over in the 2022 NFL draft, a major blow to his career dream. He was later picked up as a free-agent by the Philadelphia Eagles, and was one of only three 2022 undrafted players to make their final roster.
In his first season, he played in Super Bowl LVII on the special teams unit (the Eagles lost that year to the Kansas City Chiefs, 38-35).
A season later, Jobe was let go. Still, he persisted, getting signed to the Seattle Seahawks practice squad and later bumped up to the active roster in 2024.
In 2025, his fourth NFL season, Jobe took off – racking up 54 tackles over the course of the regular season as one of the Seahawk’s cornerbacks and helping send the Seahawks to their first Super Bowl since 2014.
“I’ve learned so much from Josh,” Haggman said. “Just never give up and keep fighting and keep competing. I mean, those are all things that I take lessons from.”
Jobe, described as extremely shy by Nelson, was anything but during Super Bowl Sunday, making headlines for a passionate fourth-quarter altercation and coming up with major stops on several third downs.
It was his second-highest tackle game of the season.
“He shined the brightest under the biggest lights,” Haggman said.
With a ring on his finger, Jobe has stamped his name in the history books as another legacy Coconut Grove football talent, next to the likes of Denzel Perryman, Amari Cooper, Frank Gore, and Gerald Tinker.
Read More: Hometown Hero: Gold Medalist Gerald Tinker
“He’s representing every single child – starting with the group in the West Grove – and helping them think I can do it too. I can be just like Josh. I can be like Woogie,” Nelson said.
Inspiring article!