When the Pittsburgh Steelers drafted Troy Fautanu in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft, they did so with significant inside information on the prospect out of the University of Washington. Oftentimes you will hear of a particular scout or executive “pounding on the table” for a prospect, but former Steeler and former Husky Mark Bruener took it one step further.
“[Fautanu] was a guy that I stood on the table for,” Bruener said in an interview on 950 KJR’s Softy & Dick Show in Seattle. “When we’re evaluating our players, we have a lot of people that evaluate them. So our assistant general manager came out to evaluate him. We had other area scouts. We had over-the-top scouts. He was evaluated by a lot of people, and he played football the right way…and we were very, very lucky, and we’re happy to have him as a Steeler.”
Bruener was part of the Huskies’ last national championship team in 1991 and now played a big role in bringing in a top player from their 2023 team, which made it to the national championship but fell short against Michigan. Bruener’s son, Carson, is a linebacker for the Huskies currently, so he obviously remains very close to his alma mater. As the west coast area scout, that inside information was invaluable to getting Fautanu on the team’s radar throughout the pre-draft process.
At the combine, Fautanu’s teammate, Roger Rosengarten, talked about how he is really close with Mark Bruener. He said that Bruener would host players for holiday dinners at his house during the season when they couldn’t travel home to family, just to set the stage for the degree that Bruener is still involved with that program.
Fautanu came in for a pre-draft visit with the Steelers, and Bruener gave him white-glove service when he arrived in town.
“Normally, a car service comes and picks up the players. Well, I got to our guy, and I said, hey guys, what time’s he getting in? He goes oh it’s late, it’s almost 10 o’clock at night. I said, well, I’m gonna go pick him up,” Bruener said. “He’s a husky. You gotta welcome him the right way. So all the restaurants are closed ’cause it’s late. I get him a couple hamburgers…he’s like, oh man, this is great. We gotta welcome you the Husky way.”
Having this type of insight into a player makes the evaluation that much more comfortable for the Steelers’ organization. Anyone can put on the tape and see the way he plays football, but what type of guy is he off the field? How is he going to fit into the locker room? Bruener had as good a measure on that as anybody when it came to Fautanu.
It isn’t often that the Steelers take players from out west, typically doing a lot of their drafting east of the Mississippi. In this case, a team need aligned with the talent of a player in the first round, and for the cherry on top, Bruener was able to speak to the type of person he was and “stand on the table” for him in front of Steelers’ decision makers.
