A knee injury cost Fautanu his rookie season, hitting reset wasn't easy

PITTSBURGH (AP) — 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 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 like 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 for 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."