Arizona football: Scooby Wright wins Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Week for second-straight time

For the second-consecutive week, Arizona Wildcats linebacker Scooby Wright III was named Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Week. He becomes the second player to win the award twice this year; the other being Washington's Shaq Thompson.

Wright recorded 19 tackles during Saturday night's loss to UCLA, 4.5 of those for loss. It was also the second-straight week that the Arizona sophomore had three sacks.

After last week, Scooby finds himself fourth in the nation with 12.1 tackles per game, and second in the nation in both tackles for loss per game (2.3), and sacks per game (1.5).

Wright was also named a Bednarik Award finalist on Monday, which is given out to the most outstanding defensive player in the country. There are 20 total players that find themselves on that list, and six of those players play in the Pac-12.

Here is one of the cases to be made that Wright has been all-around the most dominant defensive player in the country this year:

Scooby Wright is the only FBS player to rank in the top 20 for each of these four categories: tackles, TFL, sacks & forced fumbles #BearDown

— Blair Willis (@BlairWillisUA) November 3, 2014

"He's been our most consistent football player period," head coach Rich Rodriguez said about Wright. "He could have been our player of the week this week but we gave to that Jared Tevis, because Jared's been really consistent too."

"Scooby plays with a passion. He plays like he wants to prove himself," Rodriguez continued. "Because of his attitude we keep getting better. I'm in the weight room at 6:30 this morning working out, and there's Scooby Wright, in there working out by himself. And he doesn't have to be there. But that's Scooby being Scooby."

"He'll become almost like an extension of (defensive coordinator) Coach Casteel out there, able to line everyone up. His knowledge of our scheme is getting better every week."

"I love Scooby," added defensive end Reggie Gilbert. "He's a great teammate, great friend, and just a great person. I think the big thing that sticks out with him is his motor. His motor's just non-stop. He's always just going 110% no matter where he's playing, what quarter it is. It's like he's playing with his hair on fire."

On fire is certainly one way to describe the run that Scooby is having out there on the defensive side of the ball for the Wildcats right now.