SirVocea Dennis isn’t exactly a veteran in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defense, but he’s been around Calijah Kancey long enough to know how his long-time teammate operates.
Kancey — a 6-foot-1, 280-pound defensive tackle from Miami, Fla. — put together a strong rookie season. He showed flashes of excellence, but there’s always room for improvement. And Dennis knows it’s coming. He’s seen firsthand how Kancey’s knowledge has grown.
“His skill set, to me, I think has always been there,” Dennis told reporters over the weekend. “It’s just wanting to use those tools and now with his knowledge, he knows the exact moments to use the tools and he knows how to win a certain way just based on a look he gets. So, his knowledge has definitely grown, like, a crazy amount but also he has Vita (Vea) in the room and Vita tells him so much, so you’ll see a huge year out of him.
Dennis, who earned big praise from Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles earlier this week, is in line for an increased role this season with the Bucs. He didn’t play a whole lot last season as a rookie, but he certainly watched how Kancey was able to make an almost immediate impact as a first round selection.
Kancey racked up 26 tackles (19 solo), 10 tackles for loss, four sacks and a pass breakup in 14 games this season, all starts. He missed most of the first month of the season and emerged upon entering the lineup as one of the more impactful young defensive tackles in the NFL.
And in two playoff games, he recorded up six tackles (four solo), two tackles for loss, 1.5 sacks and a pass breakup.
The sky is the limit for Kancey. He’s an undersized defensive tackle with the sort of twitch and get-off speed that’s nearly impossible for opposing offensive linemen to stop. He flashed last season, despite his youth and inexperience, and he should be even better following his first full NFL offseason.
The Buccaneers drafted Kancey with the 19th pick of the 2023 NFL Draft, and he’s already rewarding that selection with promising play.
Kancey put together one of the best Pitt careers in recent memory, earning his spot in the NFL after a standout career in Pittsburgh — arriving as a little-recruited three-star out of the Miami area.
Kancey was the 2022 ACC Defensive Player of the Year and a two-time All-American (just the 13th player in program history to earn unanimous honors in 2022) during his time at Pitt.
He racked up 31 tackles (17 solo), 14.5 tackles for loss and 7.5 sacks in 2022, in just 11 games, as he cemented himself as the leading interior pass rusher in college football — the No. 1 trait that attracted NFL teams in his draft cycle. His speed and quickness at 281 pounds are almost unheard of.
In his Pitt career, through just three seasons, Kancey recorded 91 tackles (52 solo), 34.5 tackles for loss, 16 sacks, three pass breakups and a forced fumble. It was a career that started fast and only got faster on the way to immediate success at the NFL level.
Kancey and Dennis are in line for big seasons with the Tampa Bay Bucs.
