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CBS News
3 days ago
- Health
- CBS News
A knee injury cost Steelers' Troy Fautanu his rookie season. Hitting reset wasn't easy
The moment when Troy Fautanu's rookie season came to a painful halt is seared into his brain. Asked to relive it on Wednesday after a rainy organized team activity, the Pittsburgh Steelers offensive tackle lifted his massive right hand and pointed toward one of the far end zones in the fields tucked behind the club's practice facility. It was a Friday in late September. The 20th overall pick in the 2024 draft was coming off the first start of his career in Week 2 against Denver, fully healed from a sprained left knee that forced him to miss most of the preseason. Fautanu trotted onto the practice field with the rest of the offense for a series of 2-point conversion drills called "seven shots." Fautanu backpedaled to set up in pass protection when his right knee "got caught up in the ground weird." The rest of his 6-foot-4, 317-pound frame kept moving. His leg did not. The result? A tear in the ligament is designed to keep the knee stable. Season-ending surgery soon followed, with lingering doubts about whether he could make it back not far behind. "There were a lot of nights where you can't really see the light on the other side of the tunnel," Fautanu said. It wasn't just the daunting physical rehab, but the emotional toll that came along with it. He knew, as a first-round pick, that his job was to get on the field as quickly as possible. Now that was gone. He had already bought tickets for his family to come watch him play. Now they would hop on planes to watch him stand on the sidelines in sweats instead of on the field in his No. 76 uniform. For a player of Polynesian descent who counts Steelers Hall of Famer Troy Polamalu as one of his role models, and who had never really been hurt before, and now found himself recovering a couple of thousand miles from home. It felt extraordinarily difficult in the moment. Looking back now, he believes it was also one of growth. He realized - with the help of nearly daily phone calls with his mother, Ma, - that he needed to stop trying to fast-forward to the end and lean into the healing process instead. "I would say I was my biggest enemy sometimes, thinking about the future when really I had to just lock into what was going on that day," Fautanu said. "But I felt like once I did lock in and really just focus on the day-to-day, I really turned a corner on my recovery." The Steelers feel confident enough in Fautanu's recovery that they have finally executed a long-gestating plan to have Fautanu start at right tackle with Broderick Jones, their top pick in 2023, moving to left tackle. (The real beneficiary of Fautanu's misfortune may be Dan Moore Jr., who held down left tackle all of last season when Jones was forced to stay on the right side with Fautanu out. Moore signed a massive four-year deal with Tennessee in March.) The plan is to bring Fautanu along slowly. It's a plan Fautanu is fully on board with, though he'd be lying if he wanted to throw caution to the wind when that familiar adrenaline spike hit the first time he lined up when OTAs began on Tuesday "Once I took that first rep, it's like ... 'I don't want to get out. I don't want to want to get out,'" Fautanu said with a laugh, covering his mouth briefly after uttering an expletive to punctuate his point. "So yeah, it's also like trying to be smart, but I'm a competitor, man. I love being out there." So do the Steelers, who have invested heavily in the offensive line in recent years while their search for a franchise quarterback continues. If all goes as planned, Jones and Fautanu will serve as the bookends, with second-year center Zach Frazier in the middle, flanked by second-year guard Mason McCormick and veteran Isaac Seumalo. Fautanu doesn't think it will take long for the group to gel, in part because they're already "super tight," a bond that firmly took hold last fall as he navigated an uncertain path back to the field that was more daunting than he anticipated. It wasn't fun. But it might have been necessary for someone who believes everything happens for a reason. "It made me more hungry than I already was, and I was pretty damn ready to play," he said. "But yeah, I mean those nights sitting in my room like man, am I gonna come back, this, that, and the other. There's a whole lot of thoughts going through my head, but at the end of the day, I made it through and I feel like that's what made me stronger. That's what's going to make me and feel me to play the best that I can for this team."
Fox News
16-05-2025
- Sport
- Fox News
Travis Hunter gets real on his and Shedeur Sanders' NFL futures: 'We just going to work'
For the first time in four years, Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders will not be teammates when their football season begins. Hunter, the second overall pick by the Jacksonville Jaguars, and Sanders, who waited two more days to hear his name called in the fifth round by the Cleveland Browns, starred together at Jackson State and Colorado during their college days. Now, they are hoping to make an impact for their respective franchises in the NFL. A big spotlight hovers over both players entering their rookie seasons for different reasons. For Hunter, GM James Gladstone has already vocalized the expectation that Hunter will be the generational talent that uplifts the team, as well as the city and game of football, during what he sees as a Hall of Fame career. In Sanders' case, he will be put in a quarterback battle that includes Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett and Dillon Gabriel, the Oregon product who was drafted two rounds before him last month. Hunter said he has spoken to Sanders since his slide down the NFL Draft board, and he knows his former teammate and great friend is ready to do the exact same thing he will to start his NFL journey. "We just going to work, man," Hunter said while discussing his excitement to partner with Panini America, who will be giving him his first rookie trading card at the NFLPA Rookie Premiere in Los Angeles. "We both got our heads down, and doing what we have to do. There's a lot of doubters out there for him, and he's going to go to work. I'm going to go to work and just going to do what we've always been doing." While the football world has been looking closely at how Sanders and Gabriel were competing in rookie minicamp, Hunter has exceeded the expectations the Jaguars had for him already. Tony Boselli, the Jaguars' executive vice president of Football Operations, told NFL Network that, while he understands Hunter is not even running in pads yet, the team has been taken back by watching him up close with his new teammates. "We had high expectations. He's exceeded my expectations," Boselli said. "You see the athlete on the field, you see how he moves, the change in direction, the body control, but it's the person that I'm most enamored with." As Hunter gets acclimated to his life in the NFL, he is also very aware of the leadership aspect of being a top pick. The Jaguars already have players like Trevor Lawrence, Travon Walker and Josh Hines-Allen as the veteran presence in the locker room, but Hunter knows he can be added to the mix as long as he does his job first. The same goes for Sanders with the Browns. "We definitely got to be leaders, especially me," Hunter explained. "I was the number two overall pick, so I gotta come in and be a leader. Shedeur, he's gotta go in there and work, earn his job just like me. But he's also got to go in there and be the head of the offense, so he's gotta go in there and be a leader." Hunter said his time with the Jaguars has been "great" thus far, and it will only continue as OTAs will ultimately lead into training camp this summer. ONE OF ONE As Hunter continues to put in the work, he is also excited for an important milestone in his early career – seeing himself on an NFL trading card for the first time. Hunter partnered with Panini America, along with several other incoming rookies, where they will receive their first Panini NFL trading cards at the NFLPA Rookie Premiere. "Just super excited to see myself on my own card, so it's definitely a blessing," he said. One day, Hunter's rookie card could be worth quite the pretty penny. But he understands it's up to him to make that happen. "I don't know," he said when asked how much he would pay for his rookie card. "I still got to put in some work." Follow Fox News Digital's sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
