If Troy Fautanu had gotten his way when he joined the varsity football team his sophomore year at Liberty High School in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson, Nevada, he might not have heard his name called with the 20th pick in the NFL Draft Thursday night.
Fautanu to that point as a football player had always played running back and defensive end.
But Liberty head coach Rich Muraco and his staff saw a young player who was growing out of those positions and into an offensive lineman.
So, after allowing Fautanu to play fullback and defensive end on the freshman team the year before, Muraco told his young star he would be making the switch to having his hand in the dirt as a sophomore.
"I always had belief in myself that I was going to do something big," Fautanu said Friday, a day after being selected by the Steelers in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft. "But switching to o-line, I didn't see the vision at first until I realized how fun it is playing this position."
It took him a little while to get there.
According to Muraco, Fautanu and his father were still set on the youngster seeing some time on the defensive line. After just a couple of games of standing on the sidelines and watching, that changed.
"He wanted to be a skill guy. And then he started growing," Muraco recalled. "He wasn't bad about it, but you could tell he wasn't really happy.
"So, after the first few games, he really wasn't playing much because he was playing on the defensive line, Troy finally came to me and said, 'Coach, I don't care. I just want to get on the field.' We started working him into the o-line, and by the end of the year, he had 12 (college) offers. I was like, 'See. I know what I'm talking about.' It was a good move."
By the time he had finished his high school career, the offers had continued to pour in. And some of them came without the recruiters even seeing Fautanu compete on the football field.
Fautanu was so athletic that in the spring, he played on Liberty's volleyball team.
"I don't know what he tested in the vertical at the NFL Combine, but I just remember in high school, he could jump," Muraco said. "One of his first offers was from Vanderbilt. The coach came out to practice and Troy had a volleyball game. I said, 'You've got to see this kid, Troy. But he's at a volleyball game right now.' The coach said he would go over and take a look. He went in and watched Troy play volleyball and he came back and said, 'Yeah, I'm going to offer him. He's explosive.' I think his athleticism has definitely helped him. And I think his sheer will to compete and want to dominate people.
"He's the nicest guy in the world off the field, but he's nasty on the field. He wants to just dominate people. And I think that's helped him along the way, too."
Fautanu actually posted a 32 ½-inch vertical jump at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis earlier this year while weighing in at 317 pounds. You can only imagine what he looked like athletically as a 6-foot-4, 240-pound athlete.
In fact, you don't have to imagine. The video exists on the Internet.
"I was pretty good," Fautanu said.
But not as good as he was at football. And that became obvious immediately to anyone who watched him play.
"Right away his sophomore year. He picked up the offense so quick. And then watching him move around. All the college recruiters came out and they were all like, 'Who's that guy?' You kind of know right away," Muraco said. "Once he started getting into the games and dominating kids, it became obvious quickly."
Fautanu plays the game with a passion. And he plays with a mentality that he wants to dominate on every play.
It's what helped him fall in love with playing the offensive line, despite his initial trepidation.
"I feel like it always has. You have to have a want to do that stuff, especially day in and day out, playing the position we do, you go through bumps and bruises easily," Fautanu said. "One day you wake up and you have bruises on places you didn't know you could have bruises. You've just have got to have the mentality that on every single play, you have a choice. That choice that I make is to be physical. You get tired or you get bruised up a little bit when you do that, but that's the choice that I make because I feel like that's the way you're supposed to play football. That's the way o-line is supposed to be played."
He learned that watching his favorite football team play as a kid.
That team? The Pittsburgh Steelers.
"Growing up, what I think of when I think of the Pittsburgh Steelers is tough," Fautanu said. "Watching Ben Roethlisberger get hit and get back up and see him battle through injury was like, 'Damn, this guy is the toughest guy ever.' Troy Polamalu coming in and hitting people over and over and over. Just seeing these guys I idolized growing up, playing the way they played inspired me to play the way I play. It's truly a blessing to be here. I can't say it enough, I'm just so happy to be a part of an organization like this. I'm ready to pour my all into this organization and hopefully contribute to (winning Super Bowl) No. 7."
Fautanu has been a Steelers fan for as long as he can remember, saying he recalls watching them play as a seven-year-old and deciding that was his favorite team.
Now 23, he wants to bring an old-school mentality to the team.
Turn on his game tape from the University of Washington, and that's exactly what you see.
Fautanu started 29 games at left tackle for the Huskies the past two seasons, earning All-America honors. But he started his high school career at right tackle. And he's played guard, as well.
"I know going through the process, even when he was being recruited to college, some schools looked at him as a guard because he wasn't the prototypical 6-foot-5, 6-foot-6, offensive tackle," Muraco said. "I heard the same thing from people in the NFL. But what makes him so valuable is that he can play all over if someone gets hurt. He told me a couple of teams had him snap at the pro day. He never really even played center in a game or anything, but he's so athletic, he could pick that up to if he wanted to."
For the Steelers, the answer is simple.
When asked where they'll play Fautanu Thursday night, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin's reply was simple.
"He's a tackle," Tomlin said.
More importantly, Fautanu is a football player. No matter where he's asked to play or what he's asked to do, he's going to do whatever is necessary to get the job done.
Fautanu knows it will be a process. But he's prepared himself the best he can to come in and contribute early.
"More mentally than anything, just making sure I'm ready to go, I'm ready to play football," he said. "The pre-draft process, you can kind of get lost in everything that goes on with the interviews and all of that stuff. At the end of the day, football is what matters, and football is what I'm here for. I'm going to try to do everything I can to make sure I'm in shape and ready for rookie minicamp and ready to put my best foot forward and show that I'm worth what these coaches see in me."
It's a mentality commonly seen with players of Polynesian descent such as Fautanu, who was a finalist in 2023 for college football's Polynesian Player of the Year.
Muraco has seen it quite often. About half of his football team each season at Liberty is composed of Pacific Islanders.
"They call Las Vegas the ninth island because there are so many Hawaiians who have moved here," he joked.
But the Polynesian culture lends itself to team-first football players.
"I think it does. Coming to UW, that 2019 class I came in with, I would say more than half of us were Polynesian," Fautanu said. "Seeing that, you just know what you're going to get out of the guys you're going to be playing next to is awesome. A lot of us are raised with the same morals, and that's family first. I think from there, doing that and living that way, everything else will be taken care of."
Muraco agreed wholeheartedly.
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"Within that culture, football takes on such a huge importance," Muraco said. "I think a lot goes with it, including family pride. It's the way they raise their children, respectful, old-school, yes sir, no sir to the adults. Listen to the coaches. The coach says run through the wall and you're going to run through the wall. It lends itself to being a good football player. He's been one of those guys who will go to battle and fight for you.
"But at the same time, he does what he's supposed to do off the field and does the right thing. That's a hard thing for some guys to step across that line and switch that mentality."
It hasn't been for Fautanu.
Despite his initial displeasure with playing on the offensive line when Muraco moved him there, he's now embraced it.
And because of that, he's now a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
It's the perfect fit. Fautanu gets to play for the team for which he grew up rooting. And he joins a franchise that loves its offensive linemen, something that doesn't happen everywhere.
"You've got to really love the sport to play a position like this," Fautanu conceded. "You've got to be selfless and put the needs of others before you, throwing your body around constantly to make sure my running back gets three yards on third-and-2. That's stuff that not a lot of people appreciate, but I do. It wasn't all bought in at first. But I appreciate them for seeing that in me. I eventually bought in and here I am."
