{"id":259000,"date":"2025-08-03T17:08:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T17:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/259000\/"},"modified":"2025-08-03T17:08:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T17:08:11","slug":"troy-fautanu-looks-like-he-played-all-last-year-former-1st-rounder-not-missing-a-beat-pat-freiermuth-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/259000\/","title":{"rendered":"Troy Fautanu ‘Looks Like He Played All Last Year’: Former 1st-Rounder Not Missing A Beat, Pat Freiermuth Says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Troy Fautanu has likely heard the chatter for a year now about how good he is<\/a>, despite his limited playing opportunities due to injury. Now healthy, he is ready to prove he is as good as advertised. So far, he can only show it in Latrobe. But soon, he\u2019ll take it into the preseason, and then the regular season, and so on.<\/p>\n

Fautanu missed almost all of his rookie season due to a knee injury. After sitting him in Week 1, Mike Tomlin started his first-round rookie in Week 2 last season. At the time, he had already been recovering from a knee injury suffered in the preseason. After his NFL debut, he dislocated his kneecap and did not practice again until this spring<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A week into training camp, his teammates are seeing it. \u201cTroy\u2019s been great. He\u2019s attacked his rehab very well, and he\u2019s out there, and he doesn\u2019t even look like a rookie\u201d, Pat Freiermuth told Pat Kirwan and Jim Miller on Movin\u2019 the Chains on SiriusXM NFL Radio<\/a>. \u201cHe looks like he played all last year. He\u2019s really super smart. It\u2019s fun to go and work with him on triples and combination blocks with the tackles because he\u2019s always communicating\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Steelers selected Troy Fautanu in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft, an experienced starter out of Washington. Despite playing his college ball at left tackle, the Steelers moved him to the right side. Had he not been waylaid by injury, he likely would have opened the season as a starter\u2014over Broderick Jones.<\/p>\n

Now Jones is on the left side and starting opposite Fautanu, the Steelers\u2019 two young first-round picks finally in place. It took them longer than they might have anticipated to reach this point, but now they need to make it worth their while.<\/p>\n

The irony is that most seem much more convinced about Troy Fautanu than Broderick Jones, who has significantly more NFL experience. Fautanu has played a total of 55 snaps, and not entirely stellar ones, either. Going back to his preseason debut, even, he had his share of rookie moments.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s hope Pat Freiermuth is right. While Fautanu isn\u2019t a rookie, the Steelers can\u2019t afford him to look like one, either. After all, they have a 41-year-old quarterback to protect. It\u2019s a lot easier to look the part on Chuck Noll Field in Latrobe than it is inside MetLife Stadium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Troy Fautanu has likely heard the chatter for a year now about how good he is, despite his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2055],"tags":[7,50549,38076,6,9073,50550,520,57,2360,426,691,12356],"class_list":{"0":"post-259000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-steelers","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-jim-miller","10":"tag-movin-the-chains","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-pat-freiermuth","13":"tag-pat-kirwan","14":"tag-pittsburgh","15":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers","16":"tag-pittsburghsteelers","17":"tag-steelers","18":"tag-trending","19":"tag-troy-fautanu"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114965938739409721","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}