Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Vita Vea, Defensive Tackle
The defending Super Bowl champions are returning all their starters from their championship season, which makes them one of the favorites entering the 2021 campaign. It also makes it hard for anyone to really “break out” as a star since the majority of the key contributors are already set.
But when you look a little deeper, you can find one player who could go from a solid contributor to a star for them — and that player is defensive tackle Vita Vea. A former first-round pick, Vea missed 11 games in his third NFL season but he was playing at an All-Pro level before going down says Sam Monson of Pro Football Focus.
"“Through the first five games of the season, Vea was playing at an All-Pro level for the Bucs, dominating as a pass rusher as well as maintaining his typical run-defense performance. Vea had 16 total pressures and a PFF pass-rushing grade of 90.3 at the time he was shut down for the season. If he comes back playing at that kind of level, he’ll immediately be one of the best all-around defensive linemen in all of football in 2021.” — Monson, PFF"
Calling for Vea to be one of the best all-around linemen in the game is some high praise but the Washington product is more than capable of achieving such status. And 2021 feels like the year for him to do just that.