Watch: Arizona DC Danny Gonzales Training Camp Day 2

Arizona DC Danny Gonzales spoke to the media following Thursday's practice. It was day two of training camp as the Wildcats are now less than a month away from opening the season against Hawaii in Tucson.

Opening Statement

"Welcome back to football. This is in my opinion the best time of the year. It gets everybody excited. There's two days out of the 365 days of the year that there's not professional sports of any kind. It's the day before the All-Star game of Major League Baseball and the day after the Major League Baseball game. The rest of the year you got professional sports every single day. College football starts on August 23 and we're going to be going all the way till mid-January and hopefully we're somewhere in that mix. The opportunity that we have of the guaranteed 12 is amazing..."

Thoughts on this defense being under-recruited/not highly looked at out of high school

"I believe in what we do, I believe in myself and I believe in the 17-18 guys that are going to play 90 percent of the snaps on Saturday that we have enough talent. You're going to sit here and hear me say that, and it's across the board. You do not have to have the most talent, but you have to have enough because if you don't have enough, it doesn't matter what we do schematically on either side of the ball. But if you have enough, now you can take advantage of some things by giving people pictures that they might not understand or do some different things with different personnel groups... If you have enough talent, it can be similar to that group."

Revamping the linebacker room

"Let's start with Taye (Brown) first. I told Taye Brown back in January, I'm going to do everything I can to out-recruit you. He looked at me and said, 'Well go ahead, you ain't' and he was right. Max (Harris) has done a great job. Levi (Su'a) has had a first two days which has been awesome because we hadn't had anything out of Levi since he's been here. He has been hurt for the majority of it. He's still hampering through some of his stuff, but he's been good the first two days so now we put on pads tomorrow and let's see that continue. Jabari (Mann) and Max have very similar qualities. Max is probably three inches taller than Jabari and has done it at the FBS level. The leadership skills in that room are something special between Taye, Max, Riley (Wilson) and Chase (Kennedy) which creates competition and value in that room."

What it means to have Treydan Stukes back

"With Treydan's injury, Jack (Luttrell) got a lot of experience too... The 2021 defense around here finished 62nd and the 2023 defense finsiehd 48th... Dalton (Johnson) and Stukes were both part of it. Stukes story is tremendous. He's talented, he's a great person and he's a great athlete. He's a great football player, he's come back from an awful injury and he's done a phenomenal job. And having that experience and having that belief in those guys and the belief in what we do and having them back, it's invaluable. You can't replace it."

If everything clicks for Genesis Smith, what does that look like?

"If everything clicks for Genesis Smith, he'll have a chance to be the Big 12 Player of the Year, he'll be First Team All-Big-12 and he probably won't be here next year unfortunatley. That's how talented he is and that's the opportunity that position creates for him. It would be a good and a bad problem to have because trying to replace that guy would be very hard. He is a special human being. He has created a non-profit. He was able to create Christmas for families that didn't have a Christmas otherwise. The kind of person he is and the fact that he wants to be in Tucson. He hopped in the portal like 'Is this what I'm supposed to do' and he went on one visit and he was like 'Why did I do this' but I'm glad he did. It gave him an opportunity to see that he actually loves this place and creates something here for himself, which is fantastic."

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