All-Twenty Tuesday: Washington DL Vita Vea

Unsung heroes are kind of a stereotypical sports thing, but people enjoy them. They’re the guys who do the work behind the scenes so the stars can shine, the ones who set up the score, the ones whose stories aren’t the ones that get told.

You need unsung heroes to be successful. Not everyone can catch the game-winning touchdown. Not everyone can be the head coach who gets all the credit, and not everyone can get the sack on third down to seal the game. But, someone can make the block to set up that throw, some assistant coach can stay up night making gameplan sheets to make sure the coaches knows what to call, and some player can take up the blocks to get the one-on-one for a teammate who finishes the game with that sack.

Washington defensive tackle Vita Vea is the player who might not always seal the deal, but he certainly sets it up, and his presence is always felt – let’s make one thing clear, every team needs that kind of guy.

On the official fight card, Vea comes in at 6-foot-4, 340 pounds. If you’re wondering if life has always been that way for Vea, you’d be correct. He was 6-foot-4, 270 pounds as a freshman in high school. Vea was so big, in fact, that his coaches didn’t know what to do with him. Yes, he played the typical trench positions, but he also played ball carrier and even quarterback at times because high school kids just couldn’t tackle him.

“He was extremely raw coming in. And that’s why I think the guy still has huge upside,” UW defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski said of Vea.

After delaying his enrollment a year out of high school, Vea became a constant player for the Huskies defense right away. He’s played in all 40 of his career collegiate games, recording 9.5 sacks and 15 tackles for loss to go along with 99 total tackles. Those numbers may not jump out at you, but remember, not only is Vea still learning exactly how high his ceiling is, but he’s often the dirty work player – at an elite level.

Let’s dive into some tape. He’s No. 50.

If you’re going to play nose tackle, whether it be in a 4-3 or a 3-4 scheme, you have to be able to not only hold your own against the run, but also be a force when taking on multiple blockers. This is essential. Your entire job description is to not get pushed back and allow the players around you to make the play, a place where Chris Baker fell short for the Buccaneers this season. Anytime Baker was double teamed, he would often get blown off the ball.

That’s not the case with Vea. When you’re watching those hulking defensive tackles in the middle, what they’re taught to do is just hold that line or “point of attack.” In the clip above, you see Vea hold his point strong and not allow any kind of running lane to open up in the A gap.

Teams in the Pac-12 have figured out that it’s just a bad idea running the football in the A or B gaps when Vea is on the field. Even when the run play is stretching to the outside, Vea moves so well for a guy his size that he’s able to maintain that control and still  force the running back back into the teeth of the defense to ultimately get tackled somewhere around the line of scrimmage. If Vea would have been blown off the ball there, which would have been understandable for a nose tackle that far away from the original snap, that running back would have gotten at least five or six yards. Instead, it was a stop.

Vea was too stout.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows with Vea.

My biggest concern with him is his lack of snap instincts. As you can see in the clip above, Vea was late to get off the ball. In many of the game I watched of him, this was a common theme. He is often the last defensive lineman out of his stance, and because of that, it leaves him open to be pushed back, as shown above. When he’s taking on single blocks, he can sometimes get away with this, as he has incredible strength. But, when double teamed or combo blocked, any millisecond wasted puts him at a disadvantage. Vea needs to be better at that to stay in control.

Part of controlling the point of attack is just that: controlling. Not only does that have to do with where you are on the field, but also in how you engage your offensive linemen.

The clip above is a great example of Vea not only controlling where he is, but his man as well. In it, Vea got his hands inside the offensive tackle, and once the running back got close to the line of scrimmage, Vea ripped off his offensive linemen and helped make the tackled shortly after. Vea’s hands are so violent and so strong and that’s a major plus in the run game when controlling the player in front of him. It’s part of why Vea can’t be contained with just one offensive lineman.

Vea’s impact doesn’t end in stopping the run – that’s why he’s considered to be a Top 50 player.

Vea is still pretty raw as a football player, as his coach stated above, but when he flashes, man, is it special. In the play above, Vea took on a double team and still got to the quarterback. And that wasn’t even an effort sack past a double team, either. That was: hike, okay there’s my first read, move a bit, and I’m down.

Vea doesn’t have a ton of pass rush moves that he shows, but I’ve picked up little hints that it may be in the cards for him.

Watch the play above. It wasn’t a full swim move each time, it was more like violent rips off his blocks, but still. Vea not only had the strength and the power to make it happen, but also the instincts that second time. If this guy can get his technique right, he has so much athletic ability in that body of his. He can own the line of scrimmage.

Vea was such a force in that UCLA game this past season that at one point they not only started double teaming him but triple teaming him, too, which was absurd. This is how you begin to make an impact beyond the stat sheet, as they say. When you can take up that much attention as a interior defensive player, you as the defense have the advantage and have to capitalize.

The play above is a cause-and-effect sack, one that I can just envision the Buccaneers doing, if Vea happens to be in red and pewter next season as the team’s first-round pick. After dominating his one-on-one assignments, Stanford began to shift their offensive assignments to Vea’s directions. Washington then combined that with a nice stunt blitz to get their edge player an easy one-on-one and he finished. Vea doesn’t get anything close to a sack on that play, but it was his dirty work to set it up – and not just the dirty work on this play, either, but the plays before that that piled on impact.

Imagine Vea being the one to set up the stunt, McCoy being the one to rush from behind him and Spence being the one to get the edge advantage. Now we’re talking about a recipe that might work. Vea is so big and strong that could easily play nose tackle in a 4-3 scheme or in a 3-4 like he played at Washington. Heck, the Huskies used Vea in all three defensive line spots.

The Bucs brought in Baker and drafted Stevie Tu’ikolovatu last season because they wanted to get bigger up front. Just because both didn’t work out in 2017 doesn’t mean they’re going to go away from that philosophy or not try to make it work in 2018. I think the Bucs would absolutely be interested in a player like Vea.

The question is: What price is right?