Faciane continues work for dream of playing on Sundays

The words that every football player want to hear after they finish their collegiate career are similar to what NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will be saying in May.

“With the first pick in the 2014 NFL Draft, the Houston Texans select…” Goodell will say when time is up on the first pick clock.

However, there are players who know that their name will not be the first overall. These players are just hoping to get a shot at playing at the top level.

Former FIU football defensive lineman Isame Faciane is one of those guys.

Since the end of the first semester, Faciane has been taking online classes towards a Liberal Studies degree and training towards that goal of playing professionally.

“I should be done with my degree by the end of Summer A term,” Faciane said. Right now though I’m training at Fourth and Inches Performance Group in Dallas, Texas.”

It wasn’t just by coincidence that he ended up deciding to train there.

“The owner Noel Scarlet played for Coach Patterson while he was in the Dallas Cowboys organization,” Faciane said. “Coach told me about them and I decided to go because Coach P never led me wrong. My agent also had sent some guys to him in the past to train and told me how good Scarlet was at what he does.”

Faciane said his training is going great.

“Everyday is like the hardest workout of my life but I feel like I’m getting so much out of every lift and run,” Faciane said.

Faciane is not the only athlete there looking to play professionally.

“Pierre Desir played for a Division II school called Lindenwood University,” Faciane said. “In my opinion he was the best corner in Division II ball. He played in both the East-West Shrine Bowl and the Under Armour Senior Bowl where he balled out.”

He also spoke on how his personal progression has been.

“It’s been great. I feel like I’m learning how to make myself better every time we do position work. And that I get faster, more technic sound on every drill, and stronger with every lift,” Faciane said.

His senior campaign at FIU was only victorious a single time. That would leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth, but he thinks differently on a personal level.

“I do have a bad taste from a team standpoint, but I feel as if I played my best football last season,” Faciane said. “I feel like I gave myself a hope for my future of getting a shot at my dream job in the NFL.”

The 2013 Conference USA Honorable Mention for defensive line is ranked number 109 out of 228 defensive tackles by nfldraftscout.com. draftinsider.com has him going into the league as a free agent saying that he “flashed skill in the past two years but he has yet to pull it together.”

In an interview with FIUSM, Patterson said that Faciane was in the top 10 percent of the defensive linemen that he has ever coached.

That compliment came from a coach who worked in the NFL and other various collegiate level teams. From 1997 to 2006 he worked with teams such as the Dallas Cowboys, the New England Patriots, and the Denver Broncos.

The Broncos played again in Super Bowl XLVIII this past weekend against Pete Carroll’s Seattle Seahawks. Carroll was Patterson’s head coach in New England.