Xavier Cooper, DT/DE, WSU

[vin.couve12]

He plays way too high, but probably his worst trait is consistently being concerned with getting past the man in front of him and he leaves his gap more often than not. This makes him terrible in run defense unless he can get into the backfield fast enough to cut off the RB's angle. That's great for TFLs, but it doesn't make up for the amount of plays where he's abandoned his gap by 1 or even 2 gaps to the left or right.

I see a guy who's all athlete and not very football savvy at all. He's sloppy in a lot of things that he does and with the way he abandons all else but backfield penetration, he'll actually hurt your run defense.

I don't think this guy would be ready to play until year 2. Maybe more. He's got a LOT to learn. Discipline is poor. Pad level is poor. Use of hands is non-existent.

This is a 4th rounder at best. Won't go UDFA just because of the combine though. I'd love to say that I'd pick the local boy higher. I generally have a soft spot for that, but I don't see player who will sniff the field in year 1 unless our secondary inside pass rusher is injured (Hill or other) for nickel duties.

 

[canfan]

I had time to watch a 2014 game vs Nevada of Cooper and I came away even more impressed. He was again solid throughout and, at times, dominate in his role.

Alright, I think you can take this as the help like I intend. It gets pretty annoying to see so much, especially within an overall good post. "Dominate" is a verb; you want to use "dominant" here. Spread the word.

or you could just add an "s" and say he "dominates in his role." Then you could freak out about sentence fragments instead of grammar!

 

[seahawk2k]

He plays way too high, but probably his worst trait is consistently being concerned with getting past the man in front of him and he leaves his gap more often than not. This makes him terrible in run defense unless he can get into the backfield fast enough to cut off the RB's angle. That's great for TFLs, but it doesn't make up for the amount of plays where he's abandoned his gap by 1 or even 2 gaps to the left or right.

I see a guy who's all athlete and not very football savvy at all. He's sloppy in a lot of things that he does and with the way he abandons all else but backfield penetration, he'll actually hurt your run defense.

I don't think this guy would be ready to play until year 2. Maybe more. He's got a LOT to learn. Discipline is poor. Pad level is poor. Use of hands is non-existent.

This is a 4th rounder at best. Won't go UDFA just because of the combine though. I'd love to say that I'd pick the local boy higher. I generally have a soft spot for that, but I don't see player who will sniff the field in year 1 unless our secondary inside pass rusher is injured (Hill or other) for nickel duties.

Agree with a lot of this. In his defense. I feel like that might be scheme related. The burst up field and abandon your gap mentality was not unique to Cooper on their defense. They were generally unsound all the way around and would gamble to try and make up for what they perceived to be a lack of talent. Their defensive coordinator was unemployed shortly after this season.

He has good initial burst, but he lacks the hand fighting skills to keep winning after getting that initial step. I saw a John Randle comparison in this thread, John Randle has some of the best, strongest, quickest hands I've ever seen.

He has a lot to work on, but from everything I've heard, he's pretty coachable. He needs to get stronger and more disciplined and refine his game a bit, but I think he could grow into a pretty solid NFL player.

 

[InadvertentSmell]

Hey played 3-4 DE for the Cougs.

 

[Recon_Hawk]

He plays way too high, but probably his worst trait is consistently being concerned with getting past the man in front of him and he leaves his gap more often than not. This makes him terrible in run defense unless he can get into the backfield fast enough to cut off the RB's angle. That's great for TFLs, but it doesn't make up for the amount of plays where he's abandoned his gap by 1 or even 2 gaps to the left or right.

I see a guy who's all athlete and not very football savvy at all. He's sloppy in a lot of things that he does and with the way he abandons all else but backfield penetration, he'll actually hurt your run defense.

I don't think this guy would be ready to play until year 2. Maybe more. He's got a LOT to learn. Discipline is poor. Pad level is poor. Use of hands is non-existent.

This is a 4th rounder at best. Won't go UDFA just because of the combine though. I'd love to say that I'd pick the local boy higher. I generally have a soft spot for that, but I don't see player who will sniff the field in year 1 unless our secondary inside pass rusher is injured (Hill or other) for nickel duties.

When it comes down to it, I like the positive plays that come with his aggressiveness a whole lot more than I hate the negative plays. Maybe you're projecting what will happen at the NFL level, but I think you're overstating how much it hurt his defense at WSU.

There will certainly be risks playing the style of football as Cooper does, but his explosive first step and timing of the snap give him the skills that make those risks worth it. He’s very similar to Michael Bennett who will also leave his gap assignment on occasion to disrupt the play any way he can.

Now, in theory a player like Bennett shouldn’t work because he's unorthodox and risky, but more often than not it just ends up causing problems for opposing offenses. I watch the tape on Cooper and it’s much of the same thing. It’s not all about him getting the TFL, but it's him using his speed to disrupt the play enough for his teammates to make their tackles.
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I agree there is a lack of discipline in some of his play, but Cooper is a 35 game starter. I’ve seen him quickly diagnose plays. That suggest it’s not that he doesn’t understand his assignment or he’s not savvy. I think a lot of his missed gap assignments is him trying to do too much on his own to make up for the bad defense around him.

He seemed to play good with his pad level to me. None of the scouting reports I’ve read says it’s bad at all. Most say it’s good. Does his pads get high occasionally? Yes, but you could put that on a scouting report for every college defensive tackle out there. It’s certainly not a problem compared to Arik Amstead who will always struggle with pad level because of his height.

Compare his skills to Jimmy Staton who we drafted in the 5th round last year. It’s night and day the amount of impact one had and the other didn’t have for his team. That puts Cooper's stock at 4th round as the latest he goes if I had to guess. I still think he's a 2nd to 3rd rd player.

He’ll need the right defense and a year to work on his strength and hand-use to be a starting defensive tackle, but I think like Bruce Irvin, you can start him at nickel defense and he can win on his athleticism and effort alone.

 

[titan3131]

not to mention that if your biggest complaint is hand strength and quickness that is our Dline's forte and if they can coach him up on anything his self proclaimed favorite player (Mbennet) im sure would have him on the top of his list to spend some quality time with

 

[purpleneer]

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Really the only positive for him on this play is the quick first step. His technique is poor and he actually gets blocked just fine considering. That play was stuffed because they left a guy unblocked and nobody else missed an assignment. From my limited viewing of him, I like the first step and he could improve technique, but I'd be concerned that he never does anything else well and the shorter arms make it more rare that he he can take advantage of it. Unless I felt the coaching was just that poor and the hand use was a quick fix, I'd wait til the 4th.
Of course, it wouldn't the first time for me to be wrong and I'm far from firm on this opinion. It wouldn't take a whole lot of better film to make me like him more.

 

[Recon_Hawk]

Really the only positive for him on this play is the quick first step. His technique is poor and he actually gets blocked just fine considering. That play was stuffed because they left a guy unblocked and nobody else missed an assignment. From my limited viewing of him, I like the first step and he could improve technique, but I'd be concerned that he never does anything else well and the shorter arms make it more rare that he he can take advantage of it. Unless I felt the coaching was just that poor and the hand use was a quick fix, I'd wait til the 4th.
Of course, it wouldn't the first time for me to be wrong and I'm far from firm on this opinion. It wouldn't take a whole lot of better film to make me like him more.

I guess I like this type of playing style from players. Some football plays are so finely tuned just disrupting the timing or angles of the play it screws the play up.

Michael Bennett isn't a huge guy but he's surprisingly good at playing the run at both DT and DE because he doesn't always play perfect to his assignment. Some of his better plays he's just using his speed and effort to disrupt the play and let his teammates around him finish. I see that in this play with Cooper. He can't make the TFL but he's forcing the RB to change his path in the backfield and that's usually enough for the defense to shut the play down.

Couple more short clips cause there's no Pac 12 scouting videos of Cooper anymore, so the next two months its going to be harder to see their games.

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[tweet]https://twitter.com/JoeGoodberry/status/565895116804861952[/tweet]

 

[titan3131]

I just dont see anything negative that we cant coach out of him.

His burst is ELITE. And you cant learn that.

 

[Attyla the Hawk]

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Really the only positive for him on this play is the quick first step. His technique is poor and he actually gets blocked just fine considering. That play was stuffed because they left a guy unblocked and nobody else missed an assignment. From my limited viewing of him, I like the first step and he could improve technique, but I'd be concerned that he never does anything else well and the shorter arms make it more rare that he he can take advantage of it. Unless I felt the coaching was just that poor and the hand use was a quick fix, I'd wait til the 4th.
Of course, it wouldn't the first time for me to be wrong and I'm far from firm on this opinion. It wouldn't take a whole lot of better film to make me like him more.

Couple things:

1. That first step is just unique. Seattle looks for unique talents, and even as a critic, you'll agree that it just leaps off the screen at you.

2. If you can, watch his 2013 footage. He doesn't exhibit that same quality at all. In fact, if that were this years' tape, you'd barely consider him draftable.

I like that. Because that tells me this is a guy that gets better. And in our development system, it suggests that he would take famously to our ability to develop players at a higher rate than most.

3. Fit. Yeah, he looks like he blows up plays, but nobody else is there and he gets blocked aside and leaves the defense exposed. If you're a team that wants to control your gaps (2 gap scheme), you're not going to take Cooper. Seattle is a simplified 1 gap scheme. We give our players one gap and tell them to win it. And Cooper can do this about as well as any DT in this draft. Maybe last draft too. We want our DTs to create crazy penetration and disrupt plays. Because we rely on our LBs to clean up and be gap sound.

It's why Wagner is so vital for us. And what happens when we don't have a Wagner being in the right place at always the right time (KC game for example), our gap fits are compromised and we get gashed.

For what Seattle wants from our DTs, Cooper is a perfect fit. We want disruption, to cause hesitation. It doesn't really matter that he gets blocked/OL recovers to wash him out. We have the complementary pieces on the DL and at MLB to clean up and destroy the play.

I actually could very well see us taking him in a trade down situation to the 35/40 range as our first overall choice. Based in large part to his unique abililty (explosive first step win) and fit within the construct of what we want our defense to be. He could easily be in a small group of players we consider as our straight up choice at 31 if we don't find a trade down opportunity we like.

Just imagine if you had that kind of disruptive quality to force QBs to bring the ball down -- giving Irvin or Avril or Bennett or Hill an extra half second to get to the QB. Cooper is a player who wins on the LOS immediately. Those kinds of prospects are really rare.

I'm not worried in the least about his length or the current inability to get off blocks and finish the plays. His is already right now a functional rotational fixture in our pass rush package as is. I would expect he would continue to develop and improve at fighting off blocks.

From a development standpoint -- his warts can be corrected. Doesn't mean they will. But I think there is evidence that he can visibly improve and do so rapidly. But his speed off the ball -- that you can't develop. That's just innate talent. And his movement skills at the combine were so fantastically fluid. He looked like a quality linebacker at times. His explosion and fluidity are just ultra rare -- and his footage on tape doesn't belie his outstanding combine efforts. If anything, they confirm one another.

 

[titan3131]

attyla I love ur name, and its funny because i was about to write exatly what u just posted. thanks for saving me time bro.