Genesis Smith

There's a lot of young rookies I'm excited to see on Sunday.

Jake Slaughter, as I said, Mesador, Genesis Smith, Brennan Thompson, Nick Barrett.

It's going to be exciting to see this all finally come together.

I'm excited to see what this offense is finally going to do in a real NFL game.

I, I just think Legend is going to factor in.

And when you look at the Arizona secondary, losing, uh, Stukes, Johnson, Smith, Dansby, Garnes to the NFL, they lost four picks and a guy that made the 53 as a free agent.

They ha- they still have talent back there with Cole-

Yeah, yet their, yet their staff feels like they're right there

How have they replenished the secondary? How's it looking?

Yeah, Danny Gonzales said that i- what Arizona did in the secondary last year was historic as far as turning guys into NFL players.

And really the, the big three that Arizona had to replace was Treyvon Stukes, Genesis Smith, and Dalton Johnson.

These three players combined to play 6,700 snaps at Arizona.

And it's what we thought.

Like, we told Danny Gonzales, or, I mean, we asked Danny Gonzales, like, "How do you replace guys that are in the NFL?" By the way, they, they had, uh, they had Dalton Johnson, Treydon Stokes, and, and Genesis Smith came out on the field together.

Saw it.

Um, and I was thinking, "Well, would've been nice if they were there for the bowl game," but, uh, you know.

One has only one nominee, and it could only be one person.

But for this one, for best rookie, and again, just training camp, just the preseason, the nominees are first-round pick Akeem Mesidor, second-round pick Jake Slaughter, defensive back Genesis Smith on day three, Travis Burke also on day three, and then I added interior offensive lineman Jacob Spalmer.

Now...

This list I started to build three, four weeks ago because I wasn't sure if we were going to do it right at the end of the last training camp day that was public or whatnot.

If nothing else, I find it admirable that he's been able to step in and be serviceable and hopefully good.

So good for him for stepping up and at least playing not too bad as far as I can tell.

Genesis Smith, you know, some ups, some downs.

I think some could argue had some really good moments, some concerns against the run.

If you just look at it, they lost a lot of talent from the defensive backfield, which as a season one, we're like, this is an elite defense, like secondary.

When you had a trade in Stukes, a Dalton Johnson, a Genesis Smith, a Michael Dansby, an Aiden Garns, like, wow, that fit together beautifully.

And by the end of the season, that group was just ridiculously good.

It was a no-fly zone type of situation.

He's obviously earned the starting nod here.

These are two guys who we don't know.

Are they going to be Dalton Johnson and Genesis Smith or Trayden Stukes? Probably not, but can they be competent, capable safeties? Because you don't want them leading in tackles, but you need them to be able to make sure that they are the last line of defense and can make some plays as center fielders on deep balls and all that stuff.

Well, Quinn Olsen is fascinating for a couple of reasons because he's an old high school quarterback that I think was pretty successful, which, you know, if he's playing that center fielder kind of free safety type position, if you know how a quarterback is reading the field and therefore you know how to read the quarterback, that's already a leg up and, you know, seems like he's a pretty athletic six, three kind of, kind of guy.