Mohamed
Kamara.
Mohamed
Kamara.
Colorado St.· 6'1"· 248 lb· 4.57s 40
"The get-off is a genuine NFL trait and the sack production is real, but at 6-1 with short arms he is a third-down specialist being asked to prove he is anything more."Pre-draft read
Kamara is a compact, low-slung edge rusher who lived on the right side of Colorado State's four-man front and won before tackles could get set. The get-off is the trait: a 1.56 ten-yard split that shows up on tape as a first step putting blockers on their heels by the second stride, and he converts that burst into power with a long-arm and a rip that finishes under the pads.
The secondary trait is hand violence. He swipes and chops with intent, resets the rush plan mid-rep, and counters inside the moment a tackle oversets. Against the run he plays with natural leverage, wrong-arms down blocks and spills to the alley. The signature is relentlessness — he chases from the backside on every snap, and the sacks came in bunches.
Attacking one-gap four-man front that lets him pin his ears back from a wide alignment on obvious passing downs.
Year 1: sub-package speed rusher and core special teamer. Ceiling: 500-snap rotational edge who wins the third-down corner.
Two-gap 3-4 that asks a 248-pound end to set the edge against down blocks and hold the point on early downs.
His value lives on third down; every scheme that makes him play first-and-10 lowers his floor.
Mohamed Kamara vs Colorado: All Snaps
Every-down look at his alignment and run fits against a Power Five opponent.
Mohamed Kamara vs Boise State: All Pass Rushes
Pass-rush-only cut showing the get-off, long-arm and inside counters.
Mohamed Kamara Colorado State Highlights
Career highlight reel of the 30.5-sack Colorado State run.
A five-year Ram who arrived as a stand-up outside linebacker and left as the most productive pass rusher the program had seen in three decades, Kamara is a pure rush specialist whose football identity is speed-to-power in a small package. Everything he does is built off the snap: win the corner, or take the tackle's chest away and walk him into the quarterback.
The production is not a Mountain West mirage. He closed with 13 sacks and 17 tackles for loss in 2023, 11 of those sacks inside the first five games, and finished second in school history with 30.5 career sacks and third with 45.5 tackles for loss. He was Mountain West Defensive Player of the Year, a second-team All-American, and a captain whose practice habits coaches used as the standard. The flags were structural: 6-1 with short levers, a body type that gets swallowed on the edge of a real NFL run front, and a rush plan that leaned hard on one gear.
Boards had him as a fourth-to-fifth-round specialist — an East-West Shrine invite with elite athletic testing for the position but a projected role, not a projected starter. Miami taking him at 158, two rounds after spending pick 21 on Chop Robinson, was a coherent bet: stack twitchy, undersized speed rushers and let the scheme hide the size.
- 01
Explosive get-off
a 1.56 ten-yard split and 4.57 forty at 248 pounds show up as a first step that forces tackles into panic sets by the second stride.
- 02
Speed-to-power conversion
he stacks the long-arm onto that burst and collapses the pocket through the tackle's inside shoulder rather than around him.
- 03
Hand violence and counters
chops, swipes and rips arrive with real intent, and he resets his plan mid-rep when the first move stalls at the apex.
- 04
Natural leverage
the short frame lets him win under the pads, wrong-arm down blocks and spill runs to the alley without giving up ground.
- 05
Motor and leadership
a 2023 captain who chases from the backside on every snap; the 11-sack five-game stretch is a product of never taking a rep off.
- 01
Size and length
6-1 with short arms means NFL tackles with any anchor can catch him first and ride him past the pocket once contact is made.
- 02
Rush plan can narrow
he defaults to speed and long-arm; when both are absorbed he can spend whole series without a third answer.
- 03
Run defense against size
he gets displaced by down blocks from real NFL guards and struggles to hold the edge on his own.
- 04
Level of production context
the volume came against Mountain West tackles, and the tape against Power Five fronts was closer to solid than dominant.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.57sp50
- Vertical
- 34.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 123inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- 23repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Colorado State | 9 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | Colorado State | 4 | 21 | 1.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | Colorado State | 12 | 37 | 7.5 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 2022 | Colorado State | 12 | 44 | 8.5 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| 2023 | Colorado State | 12 | 56 | 13 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Career | — | 49 | 168 | 30.5 | 0 | 2 | 5 |
2020-2023 verified line by line on cfbstats.com. cfbstats has no 2019 page for Kamara; that season is derived by subtracting the verified 2020-23 totals from Colorado State's official career figures (49 G, 168 tackles, 45.5 TFL, 30.5 sacks), which yields 9 G, 10 tackles, 1.5 TFL and 0.0 sacks. Unverified splits are left null rather than zero-filled.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Short, powerful speed-to-power end whose value is real but confined to designated rush snaps.
Undersized bend-and-burst rusher who found double-digit sacks once a staff built a sub-package around him.
Productive Group of Five rusher whose length and size cap him at practice-squad and camp-body status.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Miami drafted him behind Chop Robinson, Bradley Chubb and Jaelan Phillips, which meant the rookie snaps never came — five games, 26 defensive snaps, one assisted tackle, and most of his usage on special teams. He never worked his way past the fourth or fifth man in the rotation. The Dolphins released him at the 2025 cutdown, Tampa Bay claimed him for the practice squad two days later, and he spent 2025 on three game-day elevations covering for injuries to Haason Reddick and Markees Watts. Tampa signed him to a future deal in January 2026 and carried him into camp on the 90-man.
In hindsight this is exactly what a fifth-round specialist bet looks like when it doesn't hit. The production was real and the testing was real; the problem is that a 6-1 speed rusher has no fallback role if the speed rush doesn't beat NFL tackles, and Kamara landed on the one roster in football already stocked with that archetype. He is not a bust in any dramatic sense — the pick cost nothing and the traits still hold — but three years in, he is a practice-squad edge fighting for a rotational job rather than a rotational rusher fighting for starts.
Data note: 2020-2023 verified line by line on cfbstats.com. cfbstats has no 2019 page for Kamara; that season is derived by subtracting the verified 2020-23 totals from Colorado State's official career figures (49 G, 168 tackles, 45.5 TFL, 30.5 sacks), which yields 9 G, 10 tackles, 1.5 TFL and 0.0 sacks. Unverified splits are left null rather than zero-filled.