Yaya Diaby, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' third-round draft pick out of Louisville in 2023, had a fantastic rookie campaign. Considered primarily a run-stopper, he showed he has NFL-caliber pass-rush chaps, as well, winning a starting job by midseason and leading the Buccaneers with 7.5 sacks.
Diaby's sack total dropped to 4.5 in his sophomore campaign, despite him making 10 more starts than the year before and seeing his defensive snap totals go up by nearly 300. Yet, most agree that Diaby did indeed take a significant step forward in his second campaign despite the dip in sacks, which required him to get 2.5 in the last three games just to get to that mark.
Those claims are not unfounded. His 57 QB pressures ranked 18th in the NFL and were more than double the 26 he had as a rookie. His pressure percentage went up precipitously from 9.1% to 13.3%. His average time from the snap to a recorded pressure was 2.65 seconds, better than the 2.87 he had as a rookie.
"Some of them were based off of just not getting off as fast as I want to," said Diaby of the pressure/sack imbalance. "We were just watching film as a unit and I saw couple clicks [where] I'm like, 'Oh, if I had got off the ball quarterback.' It was like a game of inches. If I get off the ball faster it's going to be a closeout."
Diaby later said that he didn't really feel like there was a problem with his ability to get off the ball quickly at the snap, and the numbers bear that out, too. His average get-off in 2024 was 0.92 seconds, nearly identical to his 0.91 figure in 2023. Instead the problem came from occasionally not figuring out the offense's plans quickly enough and hesitating just a bit. Even for elite pass-rushers, a hesitation can allow an offensive tackle to lock you down before you get started, or give the quarterback just enough time to get rid of the ball.
"Really, my get off has never been the problem," said Diaby. "I believe I've got a great get off – it's just play recognition. Just seeing if I know whether it could be play-action, or if I know it could be certain things. It's just that extra get off."
Late in the 2024 season, Diaby decided to stop worrying about his sack numbers and just let it loose. Not surprisingly, that 2.5-sack rush to end the season quickly followed. That's why he know is focusing on just being consistent in everything he does.
"Just staying consistent," he said. "Even though the sack numbers went down, I feel like I've been consistent in all other categories, and I just want to keep building on that."
Oh, and there's one more change in 2025 that could help spike Diaby's sack totals: the addition of star pass-rusher Haason Reddick on a one-year prove-it deal. Head Coach Todd Bowles has repeated frequently this offseason that he wants to get more pressure with a pure four-man rush so that he can use his exotic blitz packages less but hopefully more effectively. With Reddick and Diaby joined by the intense interior-line duo of Vita Vea and Calijah Kancey – the latter of whom has his sights set on the NFL sack crown – the Bucs just may have the horses to do that. Diaby can't wait.
"Saying that makes me smile because that's all I want to do," said Diaby. "I just want to get off and get to the quarterback. It's part of the defense – you've got to do what you've got to do to help everybody be successful. Sometimes when I dropped in coverage, Calijah and Vita got sacks, so it's just all hand-in-hand, but this year it would mean a lot if I could just line up and just get after the quarterback."
