GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Never in his football life -- not in high school, not at the University of Michigan (where he did just about everything else), not in 18 years in the NFL -- did Charles Woodson do any placekicking.

“I scored the touchdowns, man,” the retired Green Bay Packers defensive star said with a laugh Wednesday afternoon. “I left that to the kickers.”

"Stop being a guy trying to kick field goals and go out there and be a field goal kicker," Charles Woodson advised Packers teammate Mason Crosby in 2012. Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

And yet, after seeing Packers kicker Mason Crosby struggle for much of the 2012 season, Woodson knew just what to say -- and he might’ve saved Crosby’s career in the process.

Crosby, who signed a four-year, $16.1 million deal to return to the Packers this week, was in the throes of an unprecedented slump in 2012, and he credited Woodson with helping him pull out of a potentially career-damaging tailspin.

With two games left in the season, Crosby had made just 17 of 29 field-goal attempts (58.6 percent) and missed at least one kick in each of the previous eight games as the Packers prepared for a Dec. 23, 2012, game against the Tennessee Titans at Lambeau Field. A few days before that game, Woodson pulled Crosby aside.

“Watching him, it just looked like he was pressing,” Woodson recalled in a phone interview. “I told him, ‘Right now, you’re a guy who’s out there trying to kick field goals instead of just being a field goal kicker.’ I told him, ‘If the team asked me to go out there and kick a field goal, then I would be just a guy trying to kick a field goal. I might make it, I might not. That’s not how it should be [for you]. Stop being a guy trying to kick field goals and go out there and be a field goal kicker.'”

While Woodson said “the conversation was pretty simple on my end,” for Crosby, it was transformative. He made his final six kicks of the 2012 season (including playoffs), then responded with the best year of his career in 2013, going 33-for-37 (89.2 percent). Since Woodson’s pep talk, Crosby has made 103 of the 117 field goals he’s attempted (including playoffs), a success rate of 88 percent -- despite kicking at Lambeau Field, where the weather is often inclement.

“That’s when I kind of came out of it,” Crosby said as he recounted the conversation Wednesday morning on Green & Gold Today on ESPN Milwaukee. “It was just kind of like, ‘Yeah! I’m aiming every detail, I’m trying to make kicks instead of focusing on everything behind that.’ I’m so thankful for that.

“We get so consumed with plays and X's and O's that sometimes you have to take a step away and say, ‘What am I doing? What’s the most important part of this puzzle?’ I talk to guys about that all the time. Because of what Charles Woodson did for me, I am obligated to pay that forward. Guys have seen what I’ve been through -- failures, success -- and I have a lot of experience that it’d be wrong of me not to share with everybody.”