Former Arizona Wildcats standout Joe Tafoya on Scooby Wright: “If you underestimate him he will make you pay”

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Arizona linebacker Scooby Wright passed Joe Tafoya for the program’s third-most tackles for lost yardage in a season with 18.5 through the UCLA game (ESPN video capture)

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JOE TAFOYA FILE

— Arizona Wildcats team captain in 2000 as a senior defensive end.
— Played seven years in the NFL from 2001-2007 with Chicago, Seattle and Arizona. Played in the 2006 Super Bowl with the Seahawks.
— Selected in the seventh round of the 2001 NFL Draft by Tampa Bay, which released him after he broke an ankle in a preseason game.
— 1999 and 2000 All-Pac-10 second-team selection.
— Marketing and advertising executive who is a brand builder with Brand Engagement Co. in the Seattle area.
— Co-creator of Volume 12, a Seahawks fan group that set the Guinness World Record for crowd noise last year.

Joe Tafoya knows all about challenges and defying projections of being second rate, so when he watches Arizona’s Scooby Wright III play, he sees the same desire that fueled his successful football career.

“When you start measuring him against the ‘prototypical’ college or professional athletes, the algorithm fails,” Tafoya told me about Wright, who is known as “Two-Star Scooby” because recruiting services and colleges overlooked him during the recruiting process because he was either too small (6-foot and 230 pounds in high school) or too slow.

Tafoya, a disruptive force for most of his Arizona career as a defensive end from 1997-2000, was not selected to the All-Pac-10 first team as a junior or senior. He was not chosen until the seventh round of the 2001 NFL Draft by Tampa Bay, which released him after he broke an ankle during the preseason that year.

“It was really heartbreaking, because then you start thinking, ‘Well, maybe I’m just not good enough to make it,’ and you start doubting yourself,” Tafoya said in a 2012 Bleacher Report article about the draft. “I sat there on my couch and I watched all these other guys that I was ranked higher than and they didn’t have the same statistics that I had, (but) for whatever reason, someone else saw them as a higher prospect than me.”

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ARIZONA SEASON SACK LEADERS
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Sophomore Scooby Wright has the most tackles for lost yardage in a season by an Arizona linebacker

Instead of giving in to his injury and potential self-doubt, Tafoya responded by playing seven years in the NFL, including the experience of playing in Super Bowl XL with Seattle. His time with the Seahawks, for whom he played in 2005 and 2006, made him a household name in the Pacific Northwest.

Although he grew up in Pittsburg, Calif., and played at Arizona, Tafoya calls Seattle home. He is a fixture there as a successful marketing and advertising executive.

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Symbolizing his desire to reach unimaginable heights, Tafoya, 36, promotes with former Seattle teammate Kerry Carter their brand Volume 12 that set the Guinness World Record for crowd noise at a sports stadium twice last year when the Seahawks played at CenturyLink Field. Volume 12 also is also involved with charitable causes in the Seattle area.

“It’s an honor to go back in the community and promote a positive message,” Tafoya told the Redmond (Wash.) Reporter.

Although he has transplanted to Seattle, Tafoya still closely follows the Wildcats and the exploits of his favorite Arizona player, Wright.

Since 1967, when Arizona started tabulating the statistic “tackles for lost yardage”, only four players have cracked the 20-mark in a season. They are defensive tackle Tom Nelson (school-record 29) in 1968, end Bill McKinley (20) in 1970, nose guard Rob Waldrop (22) in 1992 and end Tedy Bruschi (27.5) in 1993.

Bruschi came close again with 19.5 in 1995. The next-best challenger was Tafoya in 2000 with 18.

Wright, who has earned consecutive Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Week honors, has produced 18.5 tackles for lost yardage with four games still left in the regular season.

“The ‘experts’ of today’s game will measure and record every single thing like hand size, arm length and height, then run comparisons against a ‘prototype’,” Tafoya told me. “It has become such a precise scientific process because football is big business. Teams and scouts create huge profiles on a guy then run algorithms and statistical analysis on his probability of success.

“With Scooby you can throw all that out the window. … Bottom line is that he makes plays.”

None of the linebacker heavyweights in Arizona history had as many tackles for loss in a season than Wright. Not Ricky Hunley. Not Chris Singleton. Not Marcus Bell. His 18.5 stands as a linebacker record at Arizona.

“If you underestimate him he will make you pay,” Tafoya continued. “Dude just flat out plays hard and you can’t measure that.

“I tell you what, people won’t underestimate him for much longer.”

ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He also writes articles for Bleacher Report and Lindy’s College Sports.