Fourth-year junior safety Christian Young and transfer receiver Jacob Cowing offered their thoughts throughout the press conference Friday at Pac-12 Media Day. The veteran players expressed their optimism of why this season will be an improvement over the Wildcats’ 1-11 campaign in 2021.

Here’s the top three things Cowing and Young said during interviews with Pac-12 reporters on Friday:

Arizona defense has picked up new system quickly

Young looked very convinced when asked about how the team will fare the system brought in by new defensive coordinator Johnny Nansen, which the team began installing in the spring.

“It is very different from how we ran it last year,” Young said. “With the veterans that we have on the defense, it helps out a lot so the offense doesn’t really know where we're coming into when we’re running every game. With the veterans on the team, it helps his [Nansen] style a lot knowing that we got the defense quick and we’ll evaluate what he has us to do.”