As a right tackle for the Arizona Wildcats, Paiton Fears stands 6-feet-5-inches and weighs 328 pounds. A mountain of a man who showed in his first season in Tucson that he's not easy to move, it's not a surprise Fears enjoys a hearty meal.

So ask him what are some of the best perks of having his mom, Dee, live nearby in SaddleBrooke, and he'll of course tell you about her love, support and affection. But it doesn't take too long before he gets to those hearty meals he'll enjoy after a long day of football and school.

"She cooks for me all the time," Fears said, of his mom, who moved to Arizona shortly after her son. "My favorites are meatloaf and mash potatoes and fried chicken, corned bread, cabbage and macaroni and cheese. Those are my all-time go-tos."

And as Paiton enjoys those meals with his mom, it can often be pretty incredible to think where he is in his football life.

Consider: Fears didn't play a snap of tackle football before high school. The first time he realized he might have a future in the sport was his sophomore year of high school at Lake Minneola in Florida. So playing Division I football for a school like Arizona and starting seven games in his first season didn't seem all that possible just six or seven years ago.

"My older brother tried to get me into football when I was younger, but I was into baseball and basketball," Fears said. "I really didn't start taking football seriously until my sophomore year. Basketball is what I was going to do. My coach in middle school one day, was like, 'you're huge, you should give football a try.'"

So he did. Fears took on football at Lake Minneola and by the end of his senior year he had scholarship offers from some smaller schools and some junior colleges. He eventually settled on Hutchinson Community College in Kansas.

He redshirted his first season there, before moving into the starting lineup in year two. He enjoyed the redshirt season, because "academic-wise, it gave me time to adjust, and football-wise, I got to learn from the older guys and work on technique."

Four games into his second season, one of his coaches at Hutchinson told Fears he had to make a highlight tape of himself and post online so schools could find out about him. One day after he posted the video, he heard from several schools, before Arizona became the first major program to offer him a scholarship.

"Before I came on my visit, Coach (Kevin) Sumlin, he and Coach (Theron) Aych, would always be calling me, and they made it feel like a family," Fears said. "Coach Sumlin was also the only head coach who came to see me play in a game. It always felt bigger than football with Arizona. It felt like a family. That really drew me in. And then I came on my visit, and I saw how beautiful Tucson was with all the mountains, and it put the icing on the cake."

Fears committed to Arizona in December of 2018 and joined the Wildcats in 2019. Last season, he played in 11 of 12 games with five starts at right tackle and two at left guard. He'll enter the 2020 season as a redshirt junior and a likely fixture on an offensive line that returns plenty of talent from a season ago.

"I'm very happy here, for sure," Fears said. "At first, I thought I wanted to be somewhere back home. I'm a Florida dude. But my teammates and my coaches have really made me feel comfortable here. Even during this pandemic, I've wanted to stay in Tucson, because I feel most comfortable being out here."