Kayvon Thibodeaux’s Drop on Draft Boards Makes No…

NFL – The senselessness of the draft cycle has caught up to Oregon’s Kayvon Thibodeaux. After about a year of being the expected No.1 overall pick for 2022, the NFL draft powers that be decided, seemingly at random, that Thibodeaux is more like the fourth-, fifth-, or sixth-best player in the class. Some of it boils down to rumors relayed by Todd McShay that teams believe Thibodeaux plays with less “fire” than other players, while some of it is probably rooted in his expression of interests beyond football.

All of it is wasted breath. Just watch Thibodeaux play football. 

Thibodeaux has every tool teams could want from a pass-rusher. He was listed at 6-foot-5 and 258 pounds his junior season, and looked like he may have been playing a bit heavier than that. Thibodeaux’s explosiveness, flexibility, and strength all come together to give him a complete set of athletic tools to use, not to mention he also has the length desired of a premier pass-rusher. The finer parts of Thibodeaux’s skill set could use some fine tuning, which we will get to, but purely from a traits perspective, it should be a no-brainer that this player goes top-three in this draft class. 

Speed rushing is the natural starting point for any pass-rusher. It looks the cleanest when done well. A devastating blend of speed and flexibility is hard to stop. Thibodeaux does not grace the Von Miller and Robert Quinn tier of speed and bend, but he has more than enough to be a force, especially considering his frame. 

This is as clear an example of speed and flexibility as it gets. Thibodeaux (top) flies off the ball, gaining a ton of ground through his second and third steps. He gets on top of the offensive tackle so fast that the tackle has no choice but to turn his shoulders to the sideline early in the play just to have a shot at touching him. From there, Thibodeaux has the tackle in a panicked position and can dip right under the tackle’s flailing arms, thanks to his flexibility. That dip move earns Thibodeaux access to turn the corner, which he does seamlessly and with great explosion towards the quarterback. 

Thibodeaux is up against a 2022 draft classmate in this clip, UCLA left tackle Sean Rhyan. Naturally, Rhyan handles Thibodeaux’s speed off the ball a bit better than his counterpart on the other side, getting out into his pass set a bit more comfortably. That is not enough against Thibodeaux, though. Thibodeaux sticks to his outside path, pouncing on the outside shoulder as soon as Rhyan slows down to give him a sliver of an opportunity. Thibodeaux kicked into another gear, executed a simple rip-and-dip, and nearly got to the quarterback despite the ball being out fairly early. Though he does not finish the play here, that kind of smooth movement to and through the corner is a fantastic tool to have in the arsenal. 

As highlighted in these past two clips, Thibodeaux’s flexibility and body control is impressive for a player built like he is. He has a long, thick frame, and yet he is able to contort his body to muscle through contact and constantly find his footing regardless of the situation. 

Take this play against Washington State, for example. Thibodeaux is lined up outside the left guard in a pressure look from the Ducks. For a lot of edge rushers, a phonebooth environment may not be conducive to success, but Thibodeaux has no issue turning a tight corner around the tackle. His raw power and explosiveness cracked the inside shoulder open, while his balance and flexibility let him work all the way around the block and get to a comfortable position to fly at the quarterback for a sack. 

The tackle tries to take the easy way out on this play. No real pass set, no hand usage — just try to take Thibodeaux down to the ground at any cost. A true last-ditch effort to deal with an elite player. Somehow, some way, Thibodeaux perfectly lands on all fours, spry as a cat, and quickly gets himself upright to chase and bring down the quarterback. The Cal quarterback makes a miracle play of his own by getting the ball out, but this would be a negative play for the offense nine times out of ten with an effort like that out of Thibodeaux. 

On top of good speed and flexibility for his size, Thibodeaux plays with the strength to be a menace as a power-rusher. He showcased some of that in the Washington State clip, but his ability to attack offensive tackles straight up and put them in a compromising position is what really opens him up to being able to win any way he wants to. 

Thibodeaux has this tackle beat every step of the way. Sure, it helps that Oregon gamed the pass protection to allocate a ton of bodies towards the middle before dropping players out into coverage, but Thibodeaux still has to win the 1-on-1 afforded to him and he did with ease. Thibodeaux starts with a couple inside steps to get the tackle to stutter and work back inside, only to attack him straight on as soon as the tackle becomes uneven in his footing. The wobbly base gave Thibodeaux the opening he needed to use his long arms to forklift the tackle, pry open the inside lane, and once again crash the quarterback’s party. 

Sometimes a pass-rusher can not go inside of or around a pass-blocker. He has to go through the pass-blocker. That is no problem for Oregon’s star pass-rusher. After striding outside initially, Thibodeaux gets square with the tackle again and gives him a stutter step, getting the tackle to panic and become uneven in his set. For someone with Thibodeaux’s power, that small opening of uneven footwork is all it takes. Thibodeaux strikes before the tackle can catch himself and drives the pass blocker into the quarterback’s lap without much resistance. That is not a sack, but it helped force an errant throw to get the Ducks defense off the field. 

If anything is going to hurt Thibodeaux as a pass-rusher early on, it may be how he uses his hands. Thibodeaux has great length and flashes of crafty hand usage, as some of these clips show off, but he has a few too many reps on film where he is late with his hands and allows offensive tackles into his chest. Thibodeaux is more reliant on his footwork and athleticism doing the work for him. On the one hand, Thibodeaux’s hands will need to be more proactive in the league, but it is also encouraging that he has been as effective of a player as he has been despite a blemish like that, and the flashes where he does put it together are tantalizing.  

Funny enough, Thibodeaux’s run defense is on a similar developmental curve right now. All the tools and want-to are there, and the flashes where everything comes together are downright dominant. However, he does have issues seeing certain run concepts from time to time and he is not always quick to play with his hands up. Thibodeaux is still overall a decent, if not good, run defender, but it is clear that he still has areas to refine and reach even greater heights. 

When Thibodeaux (top) gets to just turn it on and go, like on this rep, he crushes people in the run game. Left tackle Jaxson Kirkland — a draft prospect before choosing to return to school at the final hour — stood no chance in hunkering down against Thibodeaux here. Thibodeaux not only cut off the play to make the running back get downhill early, but also came off the block in time to help make the tackle behind the line of scrimmage. 

Thibodeaux’s athleticism alone causes problems in the run game, too. The offense is running split zone on this rep, which should mean everyone blocks zone one away and the “splitting” tight end comes back the other way to kick out the back side edge defender. Thibodeaux screams off the snap so quickly that the tight end trying to get an angle on him never has a chance. In turn, Thibodeaux gets through the line of scrimmage and cuts off the splitter, effectively taking two blockers for one defender to cause a traffic jam right in front of the back. 

Plays like this are where Thibodeaux’s (top) eyes can get overzealous. Utah is running a flare screen away from Thibodeaux with a quarterback counter run right at him. At the snap of the ball, all Thibodeaux sees is the back go away, which he responds to by gaining depth and looking for a way to work over the top towards the screen. He is only focused on the back. By the time Thibodeaux realizes the quarterback kept the ball and has two lead blocks paving the way for him, he is too far inside and off the line of scrimmage to do anything. Granted, the play does not go for too many yards anyway, but Thibodeaux completely took himself out of the play by only eyeing the running back. 

At this point, it may sound like Thibodeaux is a raw, ultra-toolsy prospect who will need time to develop, but that is only half true. Thibodeaux is not raw in a vacuum, or even relative to some other first-round edge prospects in this class, but perhaps he is a little unrefined relative to a usual No.1 or No.2 overall pick. He is not quite as ready-made as Myles Garrett, Chase Young and Nick Bosa were coming out of college. Still, Thibodeaux’s floor is still relatively high given his full gamut of athletic tools and considering how effective he has been even without some of that fine tuning yet. 

Thibodeaux is the best pass-rusher in this class and a top-10 pick in any class. If teams at the top of the draft favor an offensive tackle, that is one thing (and especially understandable for the Jaguars), but Thibodeaux should be the first pass-rusher off the board. Players with Thibodeaux’s complete athletic skill set are not easy to find, and a year or two of letting him ramp up from good to great will be well worth it.