The purpose of this post is not to disparage cornerback Kevin King – enough critics have already been doing that. Instead, my aim is to advocate that Green Bay get smart in finding a capable replacement for him.
In the spring of 2017, Ted Thompson and his crew selected Kevin King with the overall 33rd pick – they didn’t have a first-round pick that year. There were warning signs aplently about the pick, but Thompson failed to heed them.
Right off the bat, King was 6’3 1/4” tall and weighed 200 pounds. The classic dimensions for a cornerback are 5’10” – 5’11” and 189 – 196 pounds, like Jaire Alexander. It might sound like nit-picking, but it’s astonishing how few great cornerbacks there are who stray from that model – with Richard Sherman being a notable exception. You want a compact body type, not a lean and willowy guy like King.
You should look for a guy who has enough musculature to withstand hard hits. King only managed to do 11 bench presses – that’s 21st percentile for CBs.
Speed is of course essential. Kevin turned in a 4.43 dash time, good enough for 73rd percentile among the cornerbacks at the 2017 NFL Combine. He did have excellent agility scores, including 97th percentile in the 20 yard shuttle.
Let’s stop right here: our eyes tell us that the Kevin King we saw on Sunday is no longer the guy who recorded those marks back in 2017. On Sunday and throughout this season, when receivers make their breaks, they immediately separate themselves by at least two full strides from Kevin – and he never makes them back up either.
Both King’s speed and his acceleration (or burst) have badly declined in four short years. He’s too young for it to be a natural deterioration. Maybe it relates to a loss of self-confidence. Perhaps it’s due to injuries.
Ah, injuries. In his rookie year Kevin entirely missed seven games, and then another 10 in 2018, and another two in 2019, and another five in 2020. In 2020 alone, KK made the team’s injury report as follows: Achilles (Weeks 2, 3, 12, 13, 14, 15, and the divisional playoff); quadriceps (Weeks 7-11); groin (Weeks 14-17); and back (Conference Championship).
In playing four years at the University of Washington, two as a safety and two as a cornerback, King stayed somewhat healthy. He did miss several games as a freshman, and he notably missed bowl games at the conclusion of both his freshman and junior seasons. This could be an indication that King’s body wears down as a season wears on.
The only awards he received in college were two PAC-10 honorable mentions – unusual for such a high draft selection.
Gutekunst vs. Thompson
For a top-35 pick, I’d want a guy whose speed is well into the top quartile. Gutekunst understands this pretty well: he’s picked Jaire Alexander (18th pick, 4.38) and Darnell Savage (21st pick, 4.36). Last March, he also obtained Ka’Dar Hollman, whose Pro Day dash time was 4.39. On the other hand, in 2018 Gutey chose Josh Jackson (45th, 4.56). The standards I would follow are that a dash time slower than 4.45 is prohibited for a defensive back, and a time slower than 4.40 is prohibitive for a first or second round draft choice.
While Gutekunst covets speedy defensive backs, former GM Ted Thompson did not. Besides King, Thompson’s DB picks included: Josh Jones (2017, 61st draft pick, 4.41 dash speed); Damarious Randall (2015, 30th, 4.46); Quinten Rollins (2015, 62nd, 4.57); and Ha Ha Clinton Dix (2014, 21st, 4.50). That’s inexplicable.
How have Thompson’s picks done in the pros? In 2020, Josh Jones finally found a home with his third team, the Jaguars – he’s their starting strong safety. Randall is the third-string strong safety for the Seahawks. Since being released after three years by the Packers, Rollins was also released by the Cardinals in 2018, and by the 49ers in 2019. Clinton-Dix was released by the Cowboys just before the 2020 season, and was not picked up by anyone else.
Just for kicks I looked up the dash time of a cornerback taken fourth overall back in 1987: When Charles Woodson participated in what was then called the NFL Scouting Combine, he recorded dash times of 4.31 and 4.33 seconds.
Especially when it comes to cornerbacks, hundredths of a second differences in 40-yard dash times are critical.
The Eyes Have It
What fans see, and have seen increasingly in King’s four years in Green Bay is a guy who plays soft – keeping well off those he is guarding. He rarely jams receivers coming off of the snap. I have to assume that he knows, as do his coaches, that if he guards more closely, he’ll be left flat-footed when those receivers make their breaks. Whenever King is at a near stand-still, he simply is unable to quickly accelerate to full speed – so soft coverage is the lesser of two evils for him.
Against the Bucs, on that first touchdown pass, to Mike Evans, King actually did jam him, though it was five yards downfield, not at the line of scrimmage. Evans then continued on his route, immediately leaving King two paces behind. The second TD was a 39-yard pass to Scotty Miller who blew right past King. The little known and little used sixth-round receiver out of Bowling Green has one thing going for him: 4.39 speed. It’s not rocket science: Bruce Arians identified the speed mismatch and capitalized on it.
Pro Football Focus graded King 99th out of 121 quarterbacks during the 2020 season, and they gave him a pathetic 45.6 grade for his coverage skills. PFF also calculated Brady recorded a 140.5 passing grade on throws to receivers who King was covering. Anyone paying the least attention should have expected that King was Green Bay’s weak link.
Toughness/Aggressiveness
I don’t know of any way to measure football toughness. Going by observations, however, I’d have to put Kevin King just below Ha Ha, and right beside Damarious Randall at the bottom of the toughness scale. Even if we ignore their speed defects, these three high draft picks have never possessed the physicality this game calls for. Players who shy away from physical contact seldom excel, or last long, in the NFL.
The Weak Link
The Packers’ coaches had to have known about King’s fatal speed/burst deficiency, so why didn’t they respond to it over the last two years? That’s a question that Brian Gutekunst needs to be asked. The only relievers at cornerback listed on the Packers’ depth chart are Chandon Sullivan and Josh Jones.
Sullivan, who went undrafted in 2018, actually saw a lot of action in 2020: ten starts, 38 tackles, six passes defended, one interception, and one forced fumble. On the year, Sullivan took more defensive snaps than did King, 729 to 664. Let’s also credit Sullivan with being able to stay healthy two years in a row. What’s his downside? His 40-yard dash speed was 4.60.
Josh Jackson got 331 defensive snaps on the year. He started five games, had 26 tackles, and two passes defended. Unlike Sullivan, Jackson came into the league with shiny prospects: he was a unanimous All American, and Big 10 Defensive Back of the Year at Iowa in 2017. The Packers made him the 45th overall pick. Sadly though, his dash time was 4.56 seconds. Is that one stat enough to explain why the fourth CB selected in the 2018 draft has been unable to gain any traction over three seasons? Affirmative.
I just don’t see the too-slow Sullivan or Jackson ever becoming solid starting cornerbacks in the NFL. though he only got 108 defensive snaps in his rookie year, Ka’Dar Hollman, with his sub-4.4 speed, holds more long-term promise than these two. By the way, why even waste the training time on free safety Vernon Scott – the 2020 seventh-round pick is 6’2”, weighs 206, and has a 4.56 dash time.
The best reason I can come up with for Gutekunst not seeking help at cornerback in the past two drafts is that the Packers have spent so much draft capital on defensive backs over the last four years: King and Josh Jones (both round-two) in 2017; Alexander (round 1) and Josh Jackson (round 2) in 2018; Savage (round 1) and Hollman (round 6) in 2019.
I believe the Packers need to, and will, expend their round one pick on King’s replacement in a couple of months. It’s probably ill-advised, however, to even venture such a prediction, as Gutey goes by the beat of a different drummer.