Bucs fans may not be extremely familiar with new defensive tackle Calijah Kancey. His outlier size made it seem like the Bucs would not be interested in the short, lightweight interior pass rusher from Pitt. Ultimately, it wasn’t Kancey’s size that proved to be the deciding factor in the team’s decision to select him 19th overall in the 2023 NFL Draft. Instead, the Bucs banked on his disruptive nature on film and his elite testing numbers.

Calijah Kancey Is One Athletic Dude

Let’s start with Calijah Kancey’s athletic testing. He ran a 4.67 40-yard dash at the NFL Scouting Combine with a 10-yard split of 1.58 seconds. That puts him in in the 99th and 95th percentile among all defensive tackle prospects in the MockDraftable.com database, respectively.

Kancey followed that performance up at his pro day by running a 4.36-second short shuttle and a 7.0-second flat 3-cone drill along with a 33.5-inch vertical jump and a 9-foot-4 broad jump. His 3-cone time was the fastest of any defensive tackle in this year’s draft. The short shuttle time was second only to Adetomiwa Adeboware. And his vertical was a Top 5 score. All of that adds up to one extremely athletic player.

Calijah Kancey was drafted with pick 19 of round 1 in the 2023 draft class. He scored a 9.60 #RAS out of a possible 10.00. This ranked 65 out of 1620 DT from 1987 to 2023. https://t.co/nQ9uSwwmsS pic.twitter.com/WsVrc6zOm3

— Kent Lee Platte (@MathBomb) April 28, 2023

Kancey compares favorably to new Bucs teammates Vita Vea, Logan Hall and Greg Gaines. His 9.60 RAS score is higher than Vea’s 9.49 and Gaines’ 6.06, while trailing Hall’s 9.81 by just a bit.

Calijah Kancey’s Physical Traits On Display

Bucs head coach Todd Bowles, DT Calijah Kancey and GM Jason Licht – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Now I will readily admit after that last section folks can cue the “Logan Hall is athletic and he’s a bust!” arguments. While Hall and Kancey share a similar weight coming out of college, that’s where the comparisons should stop.

Weighing 281 pounds on a 6-foot-1 frame is a lot different than 283 pounds on a 6-foot-6 frame. Hall’s lack of weight and anchor were exposed in 2022 at the NFL level because he struggled with his pad level. Allowing defenders to get lower than him negated his ability to drive forward and rendered him lightweight in his attack.

Contrast that with Kancey’s low-to-the-ground frame that is similar in how Hall of Famer John Randle was able to succeed with a smaller stature, and you have a player who can win with natural leverage. That leverage minimizes Kancey’s lack of play strength.

Here Kancey (No. 8 playing over the center) uses his lightning quick get-off to engage the guard’s chest before his opponent has the opportunity to try and bully him. At that point Kancey can drive from underneath the guard’s frame, effectively reversing the strength advantage while putting him on roller skates.

You can see it again in the clip above, as Kancey is able to get underneath both of the offensive linemen trying to double team him. This enables him to drop his hips and put down a solid anchor and prevent them from displacing him until he can swing around to fill in the open gap that the running back was trying to move through. The Bucs are surely hopeful these traits can translate to the NFL level and allow him to minimize his potential weaknesses.

Speed, Explosiveness And Surface Area

Kancey’s speed metrics are impressive, but there can be a difference between “track speed” and functional speed. That difference does not exist with Kancey. He uses his strong lower half and advanced feel for timing to explode off the snap and shoot up field with haste.

Calijah Kancey
– Rare quickness and twitch
– Explosive movement pic.twitter.com/Lxh7oYhLiy

— Austin Erwin (@aledraftscout) April 25, 2023

He can also reduce the surface area blockers have to work with by twisting his hips to slide between blockers. This makes it difficult for them to land hands on him as he shimmies by them. You can see that in the clip below.

Calijah Kancey’s Violent Hands

Hand usage is a more advanced skill set that many young pass rushers struggle with. Don’t count Kancey as a part of that group, though. He uses his to swat away would-be blockers’ punches on a regular basis.

Here Kancey uses his outside hand to get a blazing fast punch in before throwing his inside hand over the guard’s outside shoulder, putting him in a position to drive up field barely encumbered by the tackle who is left to try and chase him down.

You see it again in the clip above where he shoots his hands in a violent manner to swat away the center’s punch so strong that it twists the center’s frame to the right, giving Kancey a wide open lane to the quarterback.

Calijah Kancey’s Lateral Quickness

The speed at which Kancey is able to fly across the faces of not one, but two different offensive linemen before turning up field while still accelerating is just fun to watch. And scary. But mostly fun. This had to surely make the Bucs brass perk up and take notice.

Calijah Kancey’s Football IQ/Prep/Plan

Watching this clip, I can’t help but think he was setting the guard up. Right off the snap he seems to anticipate the offensive lineman is going to lean forward. So Kancey catches him on the lean by immediately shifting to the guards outside shoulder and swimming around him. From there Kancey could penetrate to the backfield without resistance. The Bucs desire players who have great instincts and high level football IQ.

When asked about his preparation, football IQ and this particular play, his defensive line coach at Pitt, Charlie Partridge, had this to say:

“There is no doubt that he worked really hard to learn how to study and opponent,” Partridge said. “And he’s really gotten to where he is ahead of the curve from a kid coming out of college. [He] studies an O-lineman and his stances. He studies formations. If there is a team that has words that they use, he is going to pick up on them quickly. He understands how things fit from a defensive perspective, so he knows when, where and how to take a risk.

“Anybody can take a risk and give up a touchdown. It takes a special guy to know when his risk is protected. And then all of those things come in moments, and I can’t remember the specific play, of course.”

Partridge continued: “All those things come into play when a young man knows when and how to take a risk. The process for him was on Monday he would come in, and the cool thing is he would bring other players with him. And it became a standard so other guys were doing the same thing. It wasn’t just him. But they were coming in and they were studying the opponent’s O-line together, putting notes up on the whiteboard.

“Tuesday he would dive into the first and second down game plan part of things. Wednesday, we put in our third down package. And he really put together a process to it. The kid really learned how to get himself mentally ready for the game each week. It was fun to be a part of it.”

Calijah Kancey Raises The Bucs’ Pass Rush

Bucs head coach Todd Bowles, DT Calijah Kancey and GM Jason Licht – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Kancey uses his elite athletic profile to create functional movement on the field that is difficult to match. Pairing that with an advanced feel for the game and technique gives him a pass rush arsenal that is unparalleled by almost every other defensive lineman in this draft. That has helped him record some impressive metrics that had to impress the Bucs.

His 92.4 pass rush grade from Pro Football Focus was number one among interior linemen in this year’s draft class in 2022. As was his 22.7% pass rush win rate. As a matter of fact, that rate was third overall in this draft class when you add in edge rushers. His 47 pressures were third in the college ranks, behind only Jonah Tovai of San Diego State and Zi’Yon Hill-Green of Louisiana Lafayette.

While there are reasonable questions about what percentage of plays Kancey will get on the field for the Bucs, there is a very good chance he will be impactful on those plays. In a draft that features flawed players up and down, in Kancey the Bucs are hoping his high-end traits show up just enough to justify the 19th overall pick.