Here’s a scoop from Pro Football Network’s Tony Pauline, who reports that the New Orleans Saints are finishing up some last-minute homework on Pittsburgh Panthers defensive tackle Calijah Kancey in the final days leading up to the 2023 NFL draft.
While Pauline was quick to caution that he doesn’t grade Kancey as a first rounder, that isn’t what he’s hearing from sources around the league:
I’ve never been as high on Kancey as most, and I don’t think he’s a great first-round projection. The size (6’1”, 281 pounds), lack of growth potential, and short arms (just over 30.5 inches) worry me. Despite my opinion, everything I’ve been told in recent days points to Kancey being a lock as a first-round pick.
Who would select him in the first round? If I was a betting man, I’d go with the New Orleans Saints. The franchise has been digging deep into Kancey and burning the phone lines talking with his coaches at Pittsburgh recently to get as much detail as possible on the defensive tackle.
Kancey posted an elite Relative Athletic Score, which comes close to the internal metrics the Saints value, but he’s also 20 pounds underweight for their standards. The lightest defensive tackle the Saints have drafted in the last five years was 294-pound Jordan Jackson, a sixth rounder last year who spent his entire rookie season on the practice squad. They signed Kentavius Street to a minimum free agent deal last summer and he played at about 290 pounds.
So Kancey would need to pack on a lot of weight just to meet one of their thresholds; there’s nothing to be done for his subpar length, which would be the shortest arms of a drafted defensive tackle in years. The Saints are notorious for sticking to their athletic prototypes in the draft. These last-minute conversations with Kancey’s coaches will need to really sell them on him as a first-round prospect. If the Saints are so curious about Kancey, though, you have to wonder why they didn’t simply host him on a pre-draft visit to speak with him themselves.
