It has been a unique few years for Penn State offensive tackle Olu Fashanu. Back in 2020 he was named the Developmental Squad Player of The Week, a sort of innocuous recognition that went largely unnoticed. Now, Fashanu is a near lock as a top 10 pick in whichever NFL Draft he decides to enter. He could have done that this offseason, but instead the towering 6-foot-6, 323-pound tackle is back for more.
There are two questions really that rise from these facts: how and why?
How does a player go from someone nobody talks about to someone everyone talks about? Offensive linemen are not usually household names, and then there’s Fashanu, who is certainly treading near that territory. That doesn’t happen by mistake.
Ask Fashanu and he credits his teammates and coaches. That’s all well and good, but having good teammates and good coaches isn’t all it takes. If that was it, everyone would be really good and most players aren’t. Press Fashanu on his part of the equation and he relents.
“I like constructive criticism,” Fashanu said. “I have a personal belief that there’s no such thing as a perfect offensive lineman, there’s always things that you need to work on. And I think having that mentality my three years here has helped me a lot just being more willing to accept criticism. And I think alongside with that I am not the type of guy to be complacent with where I’m at. Not to say that I haven’t acknowledged like everything that’s happened the last year, but I still have a ways to go in order to help the team win. So I think it’s between not being complacent and also just me being able to take constructive criticism.”
The rest of it, sure, he was born with the genes that turned him into the size of human he has become. But sometimes you have to decide that being good is something you want, and understand that being good is something you have to work toward. So yeah, Fashanu can thank his parents for good genes and his coaches for good advice, but greatness isn’t gifted.
It’s earned.
“When you come in as a freshman, there’s a certain hump that you have to get over, and what separates guys from playing earlier than others is how quickly they’re able to get over that hump,” Fashanu said. “And for me, it took me a lot longer to get over the hump because my first season I was on the developmental squad, then going into that next year, my spring ball I didn’t do as well as I wanted to. So I just decided to work a lot, I decided to work harder, more than I ever had before during the summer, trying to improve on things that maybe I didn’t improve on the year before. That camp going into my redshirt freshman year I had a really good camp and I was getting noticed by the coaches. And I felt that like once I once I was able to get over that hump then I started making that steady progression up to where I’m at right now.”
The results speak for themselves. Fashanu headed into the offseason nearly a consensus top 10 pick after he was a rock on Penn State’s offensive line for all of the 2022 season that he was healthy. It’s hard to understate the value of his decision to return. For as good as running backs Kaytron Allen and Nick Singleton might be, for as good as Drew Allar might become, Fashanu is still Penn State’s best offensive player. An unthinkable reality for a program that has fielded “this is what we’ve got” offensive lines for the better part of the last decade.
Development indeed.
“I do remember the first time it was being talked about I thought it was a joke from my teammates,” Fashanu said of the first mock draft he saw. “There were a couple of them. I thought they were joking with me. I was like ‘stop playing,’ and then they actually showed me and I was like ‘Oh, wow,’ like this is actually like real.”
That brings in the second question: Why? You can make plenty of arguments that Fashanu might be an even better player — and likely will be — after an extra season in college. It’s entirely possible that when it’s all said and done Fashanu could go in the top five. But that’s a tough gamble up against other improving players, health concerns and the general uncertainty of sports.
Anything can happen, and nobody would have blamed Fashanu for taking the opportunity — and the money — and running.
“There are a lot of different reasons I wanted to come back but the main two reasons: so I could graduate in the summer and start my master’s in the fall, and then because I think this team can go to better places than we were last year,” Fashanu said. “So I think it’s between those two… obviously I still want to improve more as a player. Not to say that even if I did declare last season that I wouldn’t have lost that mentality, but, you know, that’s just another reason to add on.”
It’s hard to know what those other factors might have been from NIL deals to personal reasons that extend beyond football. Whatever the case might be, there’s something for staying put and finishing what you started, even if it’s a risk in its own right.
“I mean, obviously, it wasn’t an easy decision at all, but I had a lot of talks with my family, my mom and dad and I had a couple of conversations with the coaching staff, but it was mainly between like my family and I, and we just felt that I was kind of in a win/win situation, whereas whatever I did, would be right in its own way.”
There is a third question as well. Does Fashanu think he’s as good as everyone else says he is?
“I do,” he said. “But again, I don’t really focus too much on opinion.”
Which is probably true. If he cared that much about what everyone else thought, he’d probably be getting ready for the NFL Draft right now. Then again, your college career is one big job interview, so he kind of already is.
