‘Gritty’ Liberty grad Troy Fautanu set up for big things with Steelers

Troy Fautanu still lives minutes away from Liberty High School and, as such, regularly experiences memories of his time with the Patriots rushing back when he visits or catches a glimpse of the football field.  

Almost all of the flashbacks are positive as the 23-year-old reflects on playing with his childhood friends and helping elevate Liberty to a nationally relevant program. There’s just one small detail that can take him out of the moment.

“It’s all turf now,” Fautanu said of the field. “It looks all cool but, when I played, it was grass at the beginning of the year, became dirt and then it was just mud toward the end of the year.”

Fautanu loved the annual deterioration, and that should tell you almost everything you need to know about how the 6-foot-4, 317-pound offensive linemen approaches football.     

He prefers the dirty or, in his words, “gritty” version of the sport.

It’s why he became a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers as a child growing up in Henderson, drawn most strongly toward the hard-hitting style of Hall of Fame safety Troy Polamalu over the middle of the field. It’s howFautanu developed a hard-working mentality that started at Liberty and extended through a decorated career at the University of Washington that made him a first-round NFL draft pick (No. 20 overall) of those same Steelers in April.   

Fautanu is off to Latrobe, Pa., this week for his first NFL training camp where he’s expected to earn the Steelers’ starting right tackle job and help maintain the ruggedness the franchise is known for.

“That’s something I take pride in,” Fautanu said. “That’s how I want to play. That’s what I want to show up on tape when you watch me.”

Fautanu’s college coach Kalen DeBoer, now at Alabama, credited him with “setting the tone” going into Washington’s season that culminated with a national championship game appearance last year. DeBoer was Fautanu’s third coach with the Huskies — following Chris Petersen and Jimmy Lake — but the pair developed a bond strong enough to make anyone think the former recruited the latter out of high school.       

Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said part of the reason why he felt comfortable selecting Fautanu was conversations with DeBoer. Those talks further convinced him that Fautanu was a, “black and gold-type guy.”

“I always thought the black and gold was so cool,” Fautanu said. “To be able to put that on is something surreal and something my family and I have been dreaming about from years and years ago.”

Fautanu was a polarizing prospect going into the draft because there was disagreement about which position he would play in the pros. He played primarily tackle at Washington, but some scouts projected him more as a guard going forward because of his smaller height.

Fautanu told every team he would line up anywhere — even center, the one offensive line position where he’s never played previously. Pittsburgh needed a center and there was some immediate speculation that it would move Fautanu there after the pick.

Tomlin quickly put that to rest, however, by declaring Fautanu a tackle in a news conference and rebuffing any suggestions to the contrary.

“I appreciated that,” Fautanu said. “I’m super grateful to be given the opportunity, and I’m going to make the most of it for sure.”

Deferring to his coaches as far as where he plays is something else Fautanu learned at Liberty. He spent the first two years of high school career playing fullback and edge rusher, stubbornly sure he could play collegiately at one of the positions.

But coach Rich Muraco and his staff often told Fautanu he profiled best as an offensive lineman, and pleaded with him to switch positions. Fautanu finally gave it a try his junior year, and became one of the best right tackles in the state.  

“They would tell me I could make it to the next level if I just listened,” Fautanu reminisced. “I was a little hard-headed and felt like I wanted to play a different position, but I trusted them eventually and then everything started picking up in my recruitment. The rest is history.”  

“Hard-headed” is the exact opposite of how people around Fautanu describe him now. The lineman has trained under Deon Hodges, vice president of fitness at IVI Performance, for the last several months to prepare for training camp.   

Germie Bernard, a receiver who was Fautanu’s teammate at Liberty and Washington before having now followed DeBoer to Alabama, introduced the pair earlier this year. Hodges was immediately drawn to Fautanu because of his coachability.

“He still had that anxiety of an undrafted guy, of, ‘I don’t know what to expect. I don’t want to do anything wrong. How can I get ahead of the learning curve of the league?’” Hodges said of Fautanu. “He was humble from the beginning. If you met him initially you wouldn’t have thought he was a first-round guy. No disrespect to first-round guys but he didn’t come in with any entitlements or anything.”

Hodges moved to Las Vegas in 2020 to work with a couple then-Raiders, and opened IVI last year. Fautanu said he was “super happy to have found the place,” because he used to just train at home with family members while he was in town.

Now he’s got a network of local professional athletes, especially football players, at IVI. A recent training session included former Bishop Gorman star/New York Giants captain Nick Gates, now a free agent, and former Raider/current Packer All-Pro Keisean Nixon.  

“He’s getting good guidance here with the pros around him,” Nixon said of Fautanu. “Guys in Vegas, I’ve learned they hang out with each other and work out together. That’s good. He’s confident, and he went to the right organization for him.”

Fautanu plans to settle down in Las Vegas permanently with his long-time girlfriend, whom he met at Liberty, but his next visit for now might not be until Oct. 13. That’s when the Steelers travel to Las Vegas for a Week 6 game against the Raiders.

Fautanu’s second-ever performance at Allegiant Stadium has a lot to live up to as he considers Washington’s Pac-12 Championship Game win over Oregon in the venue last December his, “favorite college memory.”

Having already gone through the big homecoming game has helped keep the impending matchup out of his mind, but Fautanu said family and friends remind him of it frequently. He’s already told them he’s not handling ticket requests, and has delegated them to an assistant.

Fautanu will enjoy the experience, but the pomp of game day and the chance to play at a well-manicured stadium isn’t what drives him.

“That’s just who I’ve been, the coaches I learned from,” Fautanu said.  “My coaches back in high school, I learned that hard work and grit from them and carried it into my college and now the pros. You can have all the talent in the world, but if you’re not down to get in the trenches and work consistently then you’ve got nothing.”

Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or