Bucs OLB Yaya Diaby vs. Saints LT Kelvin Banks Jr.: Rounds 1 and 2

Almost every edge rusher has an offensive tackle profile he prefers to face off against and a profile he struggles against. For Bucs outside linebacker Yaya Diaby, he has found the latter in new divisional opponent Kelvin Banks Jr., the left tackle for the New Orleans Saints.

The two faced off against each other plenty across two meetings last year. Next Gen Stats credited Diaby with nine pressures and zero sacks in those two games, but only two of those pressures came when he had a true one-on-one with Banks. The other seven came via scheme or by hunting matchups for Diaby elsewhere on the line.

Barring injury, the two will square off against each other two more times in 2026. The 2025 tape shows how Banks held the advantage for most of their matchups last year, how Diaby got the best of Banks on those two pressures, and how he should approach 2026 to yield better results.

Yaya Diaby’s Strengths

Yaya Diaby is a speed-to-power, bull rush specialist who just started to understand counters last year. If the opposing offensive tackle struggles to anchor or re-anchor, Diaby is a nightmare matchup. NGS measured Diaby’s average get-off at 0.83 seconds in 2025. Among qualified edge defenders (minimum 150 pass rushes), only 14 players had a quicker average. But unlike Jonathan Cooper, Haason Reddick and Nik Bonitto – guys ahead of him on that list who like to win with speed and bend around the arc – Diaby wanted to go through a tackle’s face rather than around him.

Diaby’s most successful pressure plan since the start of 2024 is to win with speed off the line, convert that get-off into power at the point of contact, and create enough vertical displacement that he finds an inside path to the pocket. That’s why you will hear myself and others refer to him as a pocket condenser – for quarterbacks it feels like the walls are closing in. Where he has had less success is as an outside rusher – a Bonitto-type who can win on the outside of the arc with pure speed that tackles can’t keep up with.

Kelvin Banks’ Strengths

Kelvin Banks Jr. is the perfect archetype foil for Yaya Diaby. Big and dense, he loves to drop anchor and engage in a battle of lower half power. That’s a battle he is going to win nine times out of 10. And that’s exactly what happened when Diaby tried to attack him with the bull rush. Banks would drop anchor and kill Diaby’s momentum. He feels comfortable in a battle of wills where he can deploy a variety of counter attacks to stonewall a defender.

Where he struggles most is against speed-bend rushers like Will McDonald IV, who gave him some trouble in Week 16 last year.

The Matchup

What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? In the case of Yaya Diaby vs. Kelvin Banks Jr. in 2025, the immovable object won the day most often. Banks’ initial anchor was enough to slow down Diaby on virtually every one-on-one. When Diaby tried to build leverage for his power attack with a long-arm, Banks was ready to counter with a long-arm of his own, winning with technique by leveraging his lower-body extension to compensate for his marginally shorter arms (33.5 inches to Diaby’s 33.875 inches).

When Diaby would get an initial jolt of displacement, Banks was ready to re-anchor on second effort and stall the Bucs’ pass rusher mid-rep. And when Diaby really leaned into his bull rush Banks had an answer for that as well.

How Bucs Head Coach And Defensive Play-Caller Todd Bowles Affected the Matchup

By the second half of the Week 8 matchup, Todd Bowles was using Yaya Diaby as a setup man to enable other pass rushers to win. Diaby became the crasher on stunts and twists as often as he was given opportunities to face off solo against Banks. Some of these reps were near New Orleans’ goal line to create a false opening in the pocket to confuse Spencer Rattler. That false opening was often shut decisively by a looping Vita Vea. Others were to get a defensive back as a free runner.

In Week 14 Bowles leaned into the pressure games more, this time using Diaby as the twister where his speed-to-power profile beat the Saints’ guards by knocking them back into Tyler Shough’s lap. Bowles also went matchup hunting with Diaby, putting him on the offense’s right side against right tackle Asim Richards, who was filling in for an injured Taliese Fuaga.

On other reps Bowles put Diaby inside as a 3-technique to leverage his speed off the snap. All of it helped Diaby rack up a 16.1% pressure rate across the two games according to NGS. But the wins against Banks on the outside were, again, few and far between.

How Yaya Diaby Got The Better of Kelvin Banks Jr.

Despite the bulk of the rounds going to Kelvin Banks Jr., Yaya Diaby had a couple of clear wins. And it’s those wins that show the blueprint for how he can flip the matchup in 2026.

Remember that Week 16 rep of Will McDonald IV beating Banks from earlier? I can’t help but think he got the idea for that mid-rep stutter into a re-acceleration to the outside from this Week 8 rep from Diaby.

This is exactly where Banks struggles to live. If he understands you want to win almost exclusively outside then he hedges with quick vertical sets. But if an edge rusher gives him a legitimate reason to guard against an inside attack, they slow his footwork to the outside and can beat him around the corner on a second-reaction counter back to the outside. This is where Diaby has all of the tools to make the pair’s next matchup a struggle for his opponent, by consistently threatening both of Banks’ shoulders.

The second opportunity is for Diaby to just trust his ability to win outside and around the arc. Watching his ascension over the past three years has been fun because there has been real development year-over-year.

In his rookie season he was like a bowling ball thrown down a lane by a toddler. No planned path and a lot of chaos. In 2024, he found his long-arm and inside step consistently. That helped him rank 11th the NFL in total pressures according to Pro Football Focus’ pressure-tracking methodology.

Last year, Diaby started to find some bend in his repertoire. And if he can trust that bend, pair it with his plus get-off and add it as a part of a game-long pass rush plan…well now you have a true alpha rusher. And a guy that Banks will really struggle to contain.

Kelvin Banks Jr. was a perfect foil to the 2024/2025 version of Yaya Diaby. But there are underdeveloped parts of Diaby’s game that can elevate him into a player even Banks can’t handle. None of this is automatic. Banks enters his second year, the same way Diaby did in 2024, and the rookie tackle’s developmental curve is just as real as the one Diaby is climbing.

This will be a fun battle to watch in 2026 – and in years to come.