Keondre
Coburn.
Keondre
Coburn.
Texas· 6'2"· 332 lb· 5.22s 40
"A two-time Texas captain who played the least glamorous job in football better than almost anyone in this class: 332 pounds of nose tackle whose value shows up in the yards nobody gained."Pre-draft read
A true two-gap nose tackle who spent his Texas career head-up on the center, Coburn is a 330-plus-pound anchor built to eat double teams rather than collect numbers. He plays with a wide base and heavy hands, absorbs the down block without giving ground, and keeps the linebackers behind him clean on inside runs.
The secondary trait is short-area quickness that is genuinely surprising for the frame — a hard first step that lets him split a soft combo block and get penetration on the goal line. As a pass rusher he is a bull, not a technician: he collapses the pocket on straight-line push and offers nothing on the edge. The signature is the fourth-and-1 snap where two blockers still cannot move him.
Two-gap base defense that plays a true 0-technique or 1-technique nose and wants its linebackers kept clean on early downs
Year 1 as the run-down nose in a rotation, playing 15-25 snaps a game and all short-yardage packages; ceiling is a long-term base starter who never sees third-and-long
An attacking one-gap front that asks its interior linemen to shoot upfield, win as three-technique pass rushers and stay on the field in sub packages
His roster value is almost entirely a function of how much base defense a coordinator still plays, which is why the same player is a starter on one staff and a cut on the next.
Keondre Coburn Highlights
College highlight reel of the anchor work, double-team absorption and short-yardage penetration at Texas.
Chiefs Draft RUN-STUFFING Nose Tackle Keondre Coburn | 2023 NFL Draft Feature
Film-based breakdown of the run-defense traits Kansas City drafted and how the role fit behind Chris Jones.
Keondre Coburn from Texas Longhorns gets drafted by Kansas City Chiefs
Draft-night segment on the 194th pick, with context on his captaincy and role at Texas.
A five-year Texas contributor and two-time team captain, Coburn is the definition of a run-down specialist: 6-2 and 332 pounds with a low center of gravity, a wrestler's leverage and the kind of anchor that lets a defense play light behind him. He was a leader in the room in Austin and never came off the field on early downs.
The production is deliberately unglamorous. He never reached 30 tackles in a season and finished his career with 6.5 sacks across five years, because the job was to occupy blockers rather than make plays. His best statistical year was his senior season — 29 tackles, 4.0 tackles for loss and 2.5 sacks in 13 games — and the value shows up in what Texas allowed between the tackles rather than in his own line. The flags are obvious: no pass-rush plan beyond power, conditioning limits on how many snaps he can play, and a role that a modern nickel-heavy defense uses for maybe a third of a game.
Boards had him as a Day 3 nose tackle with a starter's floor in a two-gap front and no scheme flexibility. Kansas City, whose interior needed bodies behind Chris Jones, took the run-defense trait at 194 and accepted that he would never be on the field on third and long.
- 01
Anchor against doubles
he sits down on combo blocks with a wide base and heavy hands, and centers and guards rarely displaced him a yard off the line of scrimmage.
- 02
Leverage and pad level
at 6-2 he plays under the pads of every interior blocker he sees, which is the entire foundation of a two-gap nose tackle's job.
- 03
Short-area burst
the first step is quicker than a 332-pound frame suggests, and he split soft combos for goal-line and short-yardage stops at Texas.
- 04
Leadership and durability
a two-time captain who played all 13 games as a senior and started 33 games across his career for a program that changed staffs around him.
- 05
Bull rush push
he collapses the pocket by walking a guard backward, which gives a defense a way to shorten a quarterback's step-up lane without blitzing.
- 01
One-note pass rush
there is no counter beyond power, and once a blocker sets an anchor of his own the rush dies with no plan to escape either shoulder.
- 02
Snap-count ceiling
the size that makes him an anchor also caps how many plays he can give, and he is a rotational body rather than a 40-snap starter.
- 03
Statistical thinness
6.5 sacks and never more than 4.5 tackles for loss in a season means a coordinator has to believe the film, because the box score never argues for him.
- 04
Scheme rigidity
he is a nose tackle and nothing else, which makes him the first player cut in a nickel-heavy defense that wants three-technique versatility.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 5.22sp50
- Vertical
- 27.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 101inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- 24repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Texas | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | Texas | 13 | 26 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | Texas | 10 | 25 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 2021 | Texas | 12 | 15 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | Texas | 13 | 29 | 2.5 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Career | — | 51 | 95 | 6.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
cfbstats verified line by line for 2020 (10 G, 25 tackles, 4.5 TFL, 1.0 sack, 2 PBU), 2021 (12 G, 15 tackles, 2.0 TFL, 1.0 sack, one blocked kick) and 2022 (13 G, 29 tackles, 4.0 TFL, 2.5 sacks, 2 forced fumbles). cfbstats does not host 2018 or 2019: the 2018 row (3 games, redshirt) and the 2019 row (13 G, 12 starts, 26 tackles, 2 sacks) come from the official program record, and the categories those sources do not publish are null rather than zero. Sacks reconcile exactly with the published career total of 6.5. Documented discrepancies: aggregators list 49 career games and 87 total tackles because their season lines exclude the redshirt year and some postseason games, and Wikipedia reports 28 tackles in 2022 where cfbstats has 29. The career row here is the sum of the verified season rows (51 G, 95 tackles); career TFL, PBU and forced fumbles are null because 2019 is not broken out by category.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Honors
- Two-time Texas team captain (2021, 2022)
- Second-team All-Big 12 (2022)
- Big 12 Defensive Lineman of the Year honorable mention (2022)
- Big 12 All-Conference honorable mention (2020, 2021)
- East-West Shrine Bowl invitee
Rotational interior body who plays real early-down snaps for a contender and lives on the back half of the roster.
Ceiling if the anchor sticks: a decade-long run-down nose who moves between teams because someone always needs base defense.
Floor if the snap-count and pass-rush limits win: a waiver-wire tackle who cycles through camps without holding a job.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Three NFL seasons and 22 career tackles: 2023 (one game for Kansas City before being waived, claimed and waived by Denver, back on the Chiefs practice squad, then four games for Tennessee), 2024 (15 G, first career start in Week 4 vs Miami, 14 tackles on 144 snaps), 2025 (waived by Tennessee in camp on July 24, claimed by Las Vegas July 25, waived August 25). Allocated to the Dallas Renegades in January 2026 and released February 16.
The NFL treated him exactly like a rotational nose tackle. Kansas City kept him for one game before waiving him on October 19, 2023; Denver claimed him the next day and waived him on November 14; the Chiefs re-signed him to the practice squad, and Tennessee signed him off it on December 13. He played four games for the Titans down the stretch, and because he finished the year in Tennessee he was ineligible for the Super Bowl ring the team that drafted him went on to win. In 2024 he got his real chance: 15 games, a first career start in a Week 4 win over Miami, 14 tackles on 144 snaps. Tennessee extended him for a year in March 2025 and then waived him in training camp on July 24; Las Vegas claimed him the next day and cut him on August 25. He was allocated to the UFL's Dallas Renegades in January 2026 and released on February 16.
In hindsight the evaluation was right and the league simply moved away from the job. Everything scouts wrote about the anchor held up on the snaps he played, and everything they wrote about the ceiling held up too: 22 career tackles, one start and no pass-rush production across three seasons with four organizations. A base-defense nose tackle with no sub-package role is the most replaceable player on a modern roster, and once he was on a fourth team the churn never stopped. For a sixth-round pick, three NFL seasons is not nothing, but this is a miss.
Data note: Identity verified by SQL. College line verified against cfbstats 2020-2022 (Texas team id 703); 2018 and 2019 are not hosted by cfbstats and come from the official program record, with unpublished categories left null. Career sacks reconcile exactly at 6.5. Documented discrepancies with aggregators (49 G / 87 tackles) and with Wikipedia's 28-tackle 2022 line vs cfbstats' 29. Combine measurables from the verified table: 5.22 forty, 1.82 ten-yard split, 4.70 shuttle, 7.56 three-cone, 27.5 vertical, 8-5 broad, 24 bench. NFL history verified against Wikipedia transaction log, the Raiders team release and Pro Football Reference.