This is Kader Kohou, a rookie undrafted free agent out of Division II Texas A&M-Commerce. While watching the Dolphins-Patriots game on Sunday, it looked like he played solid football. So, I dove deeper into the game film and data.
Basic Stats
In the Week 1 game, Kohou accumulated a 91.2 PFF grade, highest on the Dolphins. 3 tackles, 1 TFL, 1 forced fumble, and 1 PBU on 18 snaps. That PBU on an important 4th down in the fourth quarter piqued the interest of many Dolphins fans. But first, how did he even get into this game?
Byron Jones is on PUP with an ankle injury. Trill Williams tore his ACL in the preseason. Mackenzie Alexander is on IR with a groin injury. Noah Igbinoghene was a healthy scratch. That left Xavien Howard, Nik Needham, special teamer Justin Bethel, Keion Crossen, Elijah Campbell, and Kohou to fill the 3 corner spots.
Background
Kader Kohou was born 11/28/1998 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Moved to the US at 9 after his father won the lottery. He played football, not making varsity until his senior year, and ran track at Trinity High School in Euless, Texas.
The 2021 Lone Star Conference 2021 Defensive Back of the Year played in 44 games in 4 years at Texas A&M-Commerce, where he won a Division II National Championship. In addition to the Defensive Back of the Year award, he was first-team all-conference twice and second-team once. He also returned a few punts and kicks in college, showing a willingness to help the team out however he can.
While accumulating 5 interceptions, including 2 returned for touchdowns, 4 forced fumbles, and 37 passes defensed in his 4 college seasons, he earned an MBA and membership to the 2022 NFF Hampshire Honor Society. That means that he graduated, was a starter or significant contributor for an NCAA or NAIA football team, and had a cumulative GPA higher than 3.2.
Kohou is one of only two undrafted rookies to make the Dolphins’ 53-man roster in 2022. Coach Mike McDaniel has raved about his competitiveness and Kohou says that he will always have a chip on his shoulder and believes everyone else should, too.
That background looks good. Kader Kohou is a competitive, smart person who does not seem to have a notable injury history and ran track in high school.
Measurables
Kohou was not invited to the NFL Scouting Combine. He put up the following numbers at his Pro Day:
5’9 5/8”, 193 lbs, 9.5” hand, 31.125” arm length, 4.50-second 40 yard dash, 1.52-second 10-yard split, 4.21-second short shuttle, 7.15-second 3-Cone, 130” broad jump, 38.5” vertical leap, 19 reps on the bench. All of that comes together for a Relative Athletic Score of 8.60, putting him in the 86th percentile of all corners coming into the draft athletically.
The big positives here are the broad jump, vertical leap, and 10-yard split. The negatives are his size and 3-cone drill. No conclusions should be drawn from pro day or combine numbers, but when diving into the film, there is a lot going on, so figuring out what kind of athlete he is on tape is a good place to start. These numbers can be a good place to start for identifying that. They show that he might be able to accelerate quickly and could be used near the line of scrimmage. He also might be usable to follow a good tight end around, given his competitiveness, jumping ability, and strength.
Data
Let’s take a closer look what kind of player we might have on paper.
As far as a sample is concerned, we have 18 plays. Since I don’t have the dots and he was not directly involved in most of the plays, I analyzed this game like a highlight tape. If this player is capable of making big plays, then he has earned a closer look at the tape. This is easier here because unlike someone like a college recruiter or a draft scout looking at high school or college film, no translation really has to happen here. The Dolphins are already dealing with a player at this level and on their team.
Kader Kohou made four impact plays. I use “impact plays” to mean when a defensive player’s name shows up on the stat sheet, whether that be for a tackle, forced fumble, pass defensed, or anything else. On these impact plays, he generated approximately -8.4 expected points added, good for an average around -2.1, good for third on the team. While this may seem backwards, remember that since expected points is a stat related to the offense, a defensive player generating fewer expected points added is better. In addition to his impact plays being extremely positive, it is also notable how many there are. Kohou had 18 snaps during the game and 4 impact plays, good for an impact rate around 22.22%. Kader Kohou made big plays, and he did so at a pretty solid rate. That is good enough to make me want to dive into some film.
Film
This first rep looks like Cover 3 with a strong rotation. Kohou is in the slot over #2 to the offense’s right (count from outside in), playing the Curl/Flat. The pedal looks solid, he gets good depth, and he hits his landmarks. I thought he looked a little bit slow getting out of his break and relating to #1. What I really like here is how quickly he puts his foot in the ground and rallies upfield to make the tackle.
This next rep is the defensive touchdown. As expected, the All-Pro, Xavien Howard, is leading the communication in navigating this bunch set. As the rep begins, Kohou does a nice job mirroring the WR’s release and staying in front of him. As he got into his stem, Kohou seems to have taken a false step, letting his man inside him. On a whip route like this one, that can lose you the rep. As the WR got out of his break, Kohou was again a little bit slow getting his hips around. If Brandon Jones had not gotten to Mac Jones here, his man was getting the ball. This rep is a loss.
This next one is a really nice rep. As Brandon Jones makes the defensive call, Kohou starts moving around, likely faking a blitz adjusting with the defense to both the bunch set and the 3x1 formation. The defense (likely Jones) read outside run. #3 turns inside to crack the end man on the line of scrimmage (EMOL). #1 is too far outside to concern Kohou, who is over #2. Kohou’s role here is as the force player, trying to force the runner back inside, towards his teammates rallying to the ball. To accomplish this goal, it is critically important that he gets outside #2. Corners are taught to play pass until it is a run, meaning that Kohou has to play this like it is coverage until he sees an offensive lineman or other ineligible player break the plane of the line of scrimmage. As soon as he gets his run key, Kohou puts his foot in the ground and takes an angle past #2’s outside shoulder, forcing #2 to engage with his teammate who is fitting the run in the C gap.
When Kohou arrives at the line of scrimmage, he surfs to make sure he does not get too far upfield so the back cannot get outside him and turn the corner. When big #77 arrives on the scene, he avoids the block by surfing at a 45 degree angle upfield, and as soon as the back gets lateral, he uses his nice acceleration to trigger hard and make a good tackle for a very impressive tackle for loss.
In our next rep, Kohou is playing top-down on a receiver and making a play. There seems to be a little bit of a miscommunication on his side of the field as to who is buzzing out to the flat, but Kohou ends up on the inside, playing what looks like a Hook/Curl. In this case, everyone is getting a little bit of extra depth. This could be because they were up by 2 possessions with about 5 minutes left, so they wanted to keep everything in front of them. The defense gets what it wants when #1 strong gets the ball on a drag route. As soon as the ball comes out, Kohou puts his foot in the ground and triggers up from the weak side. When the ball comes, Kohou is already at a very high speed and puts his shoulder on the ball, popping it out and getting his offense the ball back. In addition to the rep, I am including the broadcast angle of the hit. It looks really cool.
So what kind of football player is Kader Kohou? He has calm feet but his hips are not fluid, so he struggles with change of direction. He is solid going backwards, but that inevitably leads to a turn or change of direction, which brings us back to the lack of fluid hips. He is a serious competitor and his teammates look happy for him when he makes a big play. He does not make business decisions and enjoys the physicality of football. Between the ears, he is very smart and has good spatial awareness. His mental processing is solid, but I believe that as he settles into this defense and works with the talented, experienced defensive backs within the team, he has the intelligence and humility to pick a lot up very quickly. His biggest strength athletically is his ability to put his foot in the ground and come downhill. His play speed is solid, dragged down by those tight hips. He plays the run very nicely and shows an ability to pick his way through the trash.
Before I make a judgement on the quality of player the Dolphins have, I need one more piece of information: with those jumping numbers what they are, how good is he with the ball in the air?
The jury is still out on this one, given that we’ve only seen one play on the ball, but it was a good one. Our last rep is the fourth down PBU. The first thing that pops here is how his head moves. There are three receivers on his side. His eyes are primarily on the quarterback, but he makes sure that while he is watching, he knows where everyone on his side of the field is. Because he has kept track of his entire side, he knows that #1 is picked up deep and #2 is locked up near the sideline, so when #3 enters his zone, he picks him up quickly. As he turns upfield, Kohou is tight to his front hip. He would likely rather be inside of him, but based on his positioning when he engaged with the WR, he is in a very good spot. Before the ball came, the WR slightly adjusted his route to the inside, improving his leverage advantage over Kohou. The main event here is when the ball gets up in the air, since he is out-leveraged by a bigger target. Kohou gets up nicely, so that jumping ability translates to the field, is careful with his right hand not to commit a penalty, and even though he is giving up eight inches to Hunter Henry, he makes a strong, accurate punch to get the ball out of there. And then he comes out with a well-earned celebration.
Conclusion
Kader Kohou is a player you can win with because of his acceleration going downhill, his ability to play the run, his competitiveness and fearlessness, his intelligence and spatial awareness, and his ball skills. The proper usage for Kohou is rotating in as a slot corner on run downs, spot-dropping into the first level of a zone coverage, potentially rotating in as a safety playing in the box and blitzing; covering tight ends; and playing as a gunner on the punt team.
He played well in Week 1, and if he is put into the right situations, he can thrive as a cog in the Dolphins’ defensive machine.
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