Plenty went wrong for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defense last season, specifically in terms of pass rush. While the Bucs ranked 11th in the league, their situational failure to close out games makes that ranking seem a little high.
It's something the team went to $14 million worth of trouble to try and fix this offseason, bringing in Haason Reddick to help bolster the group.
Despite the collective struggles, one of the lone bright spots was Calijah Kancey's continued development. He's settled into a hybrid role as a defensive tackle on paper but a pass-rushing threat on the field, which has everyone excited about what he'll do with another offseason to work on his game.
There are, however, some skeptics among us.
Calijah Kancey is hardly facing a make-or-break season in 2025, even if critics are arguing that
PFF's Dalton Wasserman went over every team's make-or-break player heading into this upcoming season and surprisingly listed Calijah Kancey for the Bucs.
Here's what he had to say:
"Kancey hasn’t lived up to his billing for Tampa Bay through two seasons in the NFL. To his credit, the undersized Kancey has racked up 85 pressures since the start of 2023, a top-20 mark among defensive tackles. However, that’s not enough to offset his dreadful 28.7 PFF run-defense grade in that span," Wasserman wrote. "Tampa Bay didn’t select Kancey 19th overall to be a situational player. He needs to prove this season that he can hold up reasonably well in run defense."
He's not totally wrong. The Bucs have high hopes for Kancey and the first-round investment in him is something that everyone is hoping pays off in giving the team a massive piece of the defensive puzzle for years to come.
The thing is, though, he's already paying off in more ways than he's getting credit.
Kancey might have some work to do defending the run, but he's already proven to be a menace coming off the line as a pass rusher. That's what the Bucs drafted him to do, and it's hard to say he's fallen short of making an impact.
That impact could -- and should -- be greater, but there haven't been any signs that his development will stunt as his career continues. In addition to the pressures Kancey has been credited with, he's also recorded 11 combined sacks over his first few seasons, which is made even more notable considering he hasn't played a full season yet.
Kancey is still young in his career and has plenty of room for improvement, but he's hardly in a position we've seen other make-or-break players. While the Bucs need him to continue rounding out his game, putting Kancey in a category that Joe Tryon-Shoyinka and Logan Hall have been in recently seems incredibly unfair and a little off-base.
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