YaYa Diaby Can Be A Disruptive Destroyer For Bucs Defense
YaYa Diaby was one of the stars of the NFL Scouting Combine, running a 4.51 with a 1.56 10-second split at 6-foot-3, 263 pounds. But it was not just his athleticism that appealed to the Bucs, who had a formal interview with him in Indianapolis. It was also the amount of preparation he put in at Louisville to have success recording a career-high nine sacks last year.
Coach Ivey noted there were times Diaby would come in early or stay late watching game film and working on his craft by studying his opponents to be able to put his best foot forward on Saturdays.
“There weren’t a lot of times during the week that I didn’t walk downstairs to put something on the meeting room board, to put down some install sheets, to put down our game plan stuff, and he wouldn’t be sitting in there either watching practice or usually watching our upcoming opponent,” Ivey said. Because the things we talk about early on is if you know when they’re going to run the ball and when they’re going to pass the ball and if we can see how a guy is working. If we can dictate pre-snap run or pass and then also dictate which way they’re running left or right, by splits, by spacing, by weight distribution, all that stuff. Then we got a chance to be highly successful.
“When you’ve got a talented guy like YaYa that also knows pre-snap those things. The more he figured that out in time, the more he bought into it, he took ownership of the fact that knowledge is extreme power. So therefore, he bought into that. He did study and he did work. There’s no doubt. That’s something that helped him be great. Now, it’s an extreme amount of power and an extreme amount of explosion. But he also buys into the fact that studying and learning and knowing what they do is about as much as it’s important as knowing what I do. You’ve got to do both – know yourself and know your opponents.”
Sack Production Came After Learning To Be Disruptive
Coming into his final season at Louisville, YaYa Diaby had modest production with just 57 tackles, 5.5 for loss, and just 1.5 sacks over two years. His third and final year with the Cardinals was when he broke out. Ivey attributes Diaby’s breakout campaign to him going from being a disruptor to being a destroyer.
“That was one of the things in last year’s postseason evaluation, the first year we talked about we’ve got to be disruptive, we’ve got to be explosive, we’ve got to knock things around,” Ivey said. “I think he made vast improvements from year one to year two in that. We go back and we look at a lot of tape and there are multiple, five, six, seven double-digit opportunities where you’re an inch, maybe two inches away from a strip sack, a tackle for loss – all those things. So are you being disruptive? Are you hurting offensive lines and offensive schemes? Yes. But we need to add to that disruption with a lot of production.
“So, the things that we were working on before, we just paid a little bit more attention to detail – and he did. He put the commitment into drilling that stuff up in the summer, being able to get that half an inch to get to that quarterback where instead of it being a close call, it’s a sack. Instead of being a disruptive play that hurt the offensive line, it’s a tackle for loss. So that was the biggest thing, I said hey you’re disruption is great, but we have to add to your production if you want to get to where you want to be and if we want to be able to try to win ball games at a high level.”
That attention to detail and commitment led to Diaby’s best year at the collegiate level. In 2022 he put up 37 tackles, 14 for loss, nine sacks to go with two fumble recoveries and two pass deflections.
