Troy
Fautanu.
Troy
Fautanu.
Washington· 6'4"· 317 lb· 5.01s 40
"Fautanu is a technician with a mean streak: a lighter tackle who wins with hand placement and balance instead of mass, and who protected a national-title blindside without ever needing help."Pre-draft read
Fautanu was Washington's left tackle in a pass-heavy offense that asked him to hold up in true dropback sets on nearly every snap. He plays with a low, wide base and quick lateral slides, and his hands are the separator: accurate, well-timed and re-fitted the instant a rusher tries to counter. He mirrors speed comfortably and absorbs power without lurching.
In the run game he is a mover — clean climbs to the second level, real force on down blocks, and the temperament to finish. He is not a mauler by mass; he wins with leverage, angles and torque. The signature is the nastiness inside a technician's frame, which is why some boards saw him as a plug-and-play guard and others as a starting tackle from day one.
Zone-heavy or gap-mixed run scheme that lets its tackles climb and reach, paired with a pass game that trusts the tackle in true dropback sets rather than protecting him with chips.
Year 1: starting tackle with the option to slide inside to guard in a pinch. Ceiling: top-tier starting tackle whose hands and feet make him a plus in pass protection every week.
A power-gap offense that leans on double-team displacement and asks its tackles to win with sheer mass, or a protection scheme that regularly leaves him one-on-one against the league's heaviest long-arm bull rushers with no help.
His value climbs on a line that already has a mauler inside; he complements power rather than supplying it.
Troy Fautanu 2023 Season Highlights | Washington OT
Full senior-season cut-up: pass sets against Pac-12 speed and finishing in the run game.
Troy Fautanu Left Tackle Highlights
Blindside reps showing hand placement, mirror ability and climbs to the second level.
Why Steelers OL Troy Fautanu has elite technique
Technique breakdown of his sets, strike timing and re-fit habits.
Fautanu is a technician with an edge. He arrived at Washington as a guard recruit, redshirted, and grew into the blindside protector of a national-title offense, which is the cleanest possible endorsement of his pass sets. The identity is balance and hand placement rather than mass, and it holds up against speed and long-armed power alike.
The résumé is short but dense. He was a full-time starter for two seasons, first-team All-Pac-12 as a senior and an Outland Trophy finalist, and he protected one of the most pass-heavy quarterbacks in the country against elite Pac-12 edges. The flags were the ones that follow every lighter tackle: he plays closer to 315 than 330, he can be walked back by pure bull rushers, and the profile leaves him without a wide margin for error against NFL length.
That produced the classic split on the board. Some rooms projected him inside at guard, where his quickness and torque would be a mismatch, and others kept him at tackle and trusted the feet. Pittsburgh took the tackle view at 20, valuing versatility across the line as a floor and a starting swing tackle as the worst realistic outcome.
- 01
Hand placement
strikes inside and on time, and re-fits mid-rep so counters rarely get him turned or off balance.
- 02
Pass-set feet
smooth, level lateral slides that mirror speed off the corner without overextending or opening the inside gate.
- 03
Balance and leverage
plays with a low pad level and a wide base that let him absorb power despite giving up weight and mass.
- 04
Movement skills
climbs to linebackers and reaches on outside zone with real range, an easy fit in any run scheme that pulls or displaces.
- 05
Position flex
legitimate reps at both left tackle and left guard, which gives a line five different ways to fit him into a lineup.
- 01
Play strength
a lighter frame that can be driven back by heavy, long-armed bull rushers when the initial strike is late.
- 02
Anchor consistency
occasionally concedes ground on the first punch and has to recover instead of stopping the rush at the point.
- 03
Length concerns
average reach means he must win with timing; when rushers get into his frame first, he is fighting from behind.
- 04
Limited starting sample
only two full seasons as a starter, so the technical polish has fewer high-leverage reps behind it.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 5.01sp50
- Vertical
- 32.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 113inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Washington | 4 |
| 2021 | Washington | 9 |
| 2022 | Washington | 13 |
| 2023 | Washington | 15 |
| Career | — | 41 |
Offensive linemen are not tracked in box scores, so only games and starts are recorded. Seasons per Sports Reference and Washington records (redshirt 2019); 4 + 9 + 13 + 15 = 41 games, 0 + 3 + 13 + 15 = 31 starts.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Reliable starting tackle who wins with balance and movement and rarely loses a rep to speed or to penalties.
Same undersized-but-technically-elite profile: quick feet, precise hands and a mean streak that outplays the measurables.
Talented lighter blocker who ends up bouncing between tackle and guard while availability becomes the real question.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Pittsburgh drafted Fautanu to start right away and the plan collapsed almost immediately. He made his first NFL start in Week 2 of 2024 at Denver, injured his knee, and missed the rest of the season — one game, one start, an entire rookie year erased. The 2025 season delivered the version the Steelers drafted: 17 games, 17 starts at right tackle, one of only three linemen to start every game, and just two penalties across more than a thousand career offensive snaps. The projected guard move never happened; he settled in on the right side and stayed there.
In hindsight the evaluation was accurate and the risk was mispriced in the wrong direction. Scouts worried about play strength and length, but the thing that cost him a year was a knee, not a bull rush. The technique held up exactly as advertised — clean hands, almost no penalties, no obvious edge-speed problem — while the anchor is still the part opponents attack. Two seasons in, the pick reads as a solid starter with cornerstone traits still on the table.
Data note: Offensive linemen are not tracked in box scores, so only games and starts are recorded. Seasons per Sports Reference and Washington records (redshirt 2019); 4 + 9 + 13 + 15 = 41 games, 0 + 3 + 13 + 15 = 31 starts.