It’s going to be even harder for Pitt defensive tackle Calijah Kancey to avoid the Aaron Donald comparisons now.
Kancey ran an official 4.67-second 40-yard dash at the 2023 NFL Scouting Combine on Thursday, the fastest time for a defensive tackle at the event since 2003, per Next Gen Stats. Kancey topped Donald’s time of 4.68, which he posted in 2014.
The parallels between the two players are — on the surface, anyway — almost unavoidable. Both attended Pitt. Both are undersized defensive tackles. Both produced higher-than-typical sack totals for interior rushers. And both clearly are athletic marvels for their position.
Kancey (6-foot-1, 281 pounds) isn’t the same caliber prospect as Donald was nearly a decade ago, but he certainly has helped himself with his scorching running time. In the positional drills that followed, Kancey also moved more fluidly than many of his other D-line mates.
NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah rated Kancey as his No. 30 overall prospect entering the combine, describing him as a “a short, compact DT with rare twitch and explosion” who is “a very dynamic and disruptive presence along the interior.”
