Ahmed Hassanein became the first Egyptian ever selected in the NFL draft. It’s the next chapter in an improbable story

Ahmed Hassanein looks on during a game between Boise State and Penn State on December 31. (Robin Alam/ISI Photos/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

Those who know him best say Ahmed Hassanein isn’t close to reaching his full potential, even as he made history this weekend as the first Egyptian ever chosen in the NFL draft.

Perhaps that’s not surprising for the anchor of Boise State’s defensive line over the last two seasons. After all, the Cairo native didn’t know a single thing about football until he arrived in Southern California almost seven years ago.

Now, with the support of his brother and coaches at Loara High School and Boise State, Hassanein has become a monster on the gridiron. Boise head coach Spencer Danielson says he’s the best edge rusher to come out of the Mountain West Conference powerhouse in a long time. Off the field, he’s even more impressive.

“Knowing his character, knowing his work ethic, knowing his journey, knowing his testimony, I’d be willing to bet everything I have on him,” said his half-brother, Cory Besch, before the draft.

“And I think any team that’s willing to invest in him is going to not just get a football player, but they’re going to get somebody who’s going to represent their team, their culture better than any other prospect in the draft. I will put that part of his skillset against anybody. The leadership, the passion and the fact that he is an untapped, unrefined diamond that is still being discovered.”

Chosen by the Detroit Lions in the sixth round on Saturday, Hassanein racked up 24 sacks as a Bronco, most of which came after he took over the starting edge rusher job as a junior. He was a first-team all-conference player in the 2023 and 2024 seasons and was a captain in his senior season. It’s an impressive resumé for any college player, but even more so for the still-raw Hassanein.

In less than a decade, Hassanein has moved across the world, learned English, learned football and the unique language of the sport, adjusted to the culture shocks of Orange County, California, and Boise, Idaho, converted from Islam to Christianity and found himself as a leader in the locker room, on the field and in the community.

But Danielson said Hassanein is more than just his story: He’s also a hell of a football player.

“I don’t want people to get it twisted. There’s a phenomenal story about Ahmed, right? Everything we talked about, who he is as a person – Egypt to California to Boise,” Danielson told CNN Sports before the draft. “I don’t want people to get it twisted: Ahmed’s one of the best football players in the nation.

“There are so many things about his life that are just make it an amazing story. But, oh man, he’s gonna get drafted because he’s gonna have a monster impact on the field in the NFL. I just want that to be known for people – you’re not only just getting a great story, you’re getting a big-time football player.”

From Cairo to Orange County

Hassanein moved to the United States from Egypt just before his sophomore year of high school after Besch made a visit to Cairo and realized the half-brother, who he hadn’t seen in 10 years, might have a future on the gridiron. Besch played football in college at Azusa Pacific University and entered coaching after his college days were done, though he still played in Europe. After one of those semi-pro seasons in Austria were finished, Besch went to Egypt and realized his little brother wasn’t so little anymore.

The then-15-year-old Hassanein was about six-feet, one-inch tall and weighed about 215 pounds, a CrossFit enthusiast and looking like he could succeed in football – a sport he’d never played and didn’t know anything about.

“At the time, I had just finished playing a professional season, a semi-pro season, in Austria, so I was still in pretty good shape. And I worked out with him and when I was working out with him and holding my own, and he was holding his own with me, I could tell there was definitely potential,” Besch said. “I knew what the game of football had done for me, giving me a purpose and identity and the life lessons that I had learned and continued to teach the next generation. I just knew that that that would benefit him.”

“I didn’t necessarily know that he was going to be a great prospect, but I knew that he needed to get out of that environment, and I knew that football was an avenue and a tool to help him do that.”

Hassanein’s home life in Egypt wasn’t great at the time and that led to issues in school and his personal life, but he found an outlet in the gym. When Besch pitched him, and the rest of his family, on Hassanein moving to Southern California and trading the CrossFit gym for the football field, the future defensive star jumped at the chance.

From there, it was the start of one of the most intense learning curves imaginable.

“He walked in here, and obviously he’s a good-sized kid, as big as anybody we had,” said Mitch Olson, his coach at Loara. “And he was athletic. He did CrossFit in Egypt.

“When we got him out on the field, he knew nothing. He didn’t know formations, nothing. So what we did is we’re going to put him at defensive tackle. It’s the easiest, and we’ll just tell him a couple things to do. And right away, he was just so strong and just dominating. In fact, we didn’t spend as much time developing him as we should have, because we had to get other kids going.”

Building a football player – and a new life

Hassanein arrived in the United States not knowing the language, not knowing the game and only just getting reacquainted with his brother who was now his primary guardian in the U.S.

There was some healing that needed to be done, Besch said.

“I didn’t actually know what I was getting myself into when I take my brother in. I didn’t know how difficult his struggles were. I didn’t know how difficult the language barrier was going to be. I didn’t know what it was right like to raise a 16-year-old boy. I knew what it was like to raise a 10-year-old little girl, right?” he said, referring to his daughter.

“But I didn’t know what that meant. Didn’t know how much he was going to eat. I didn’t know all of the challenges and things, but I did know that God had me there for a reason … and I knew that God’s calling on my life as a coach was purposeful.”

Hassanein worked hard at his game – and at learning English. Olson said within about three months, Hassanein went from knowing very little English to understanding what was being said and being able to communicate effectively.

Learning the rules of football, though, was a bit more of a challenge.

“We start playing games and, in every game, he gets a 15-yard penalty because he didn’t know the rules,” Olson said. “The first game he played in, about the first series, he grabs the quarterback’s face mask and just body slams him, and he gets flagged.

He added: “Next game he’s on the punt return team and he tackles a guy who’s running down trying to make the tackle. … So we taught him a bunch of stuff, but then there was a whole bunch of stuff that he learned. But I’m telling you, halfway through his first year, you’d have thought he’d been playing football for two, three years.”

A lot of that work got done at home with Besch, whose furniture sometimes suffered for it.

“Any detail you can think of about the game, I’m having to explain to him, whether that’s around the kitchen table, in the kitchen,” Besch said. “We’re working on how to get leverage on a blocker. He’s throwing me into cabinets. It was insane. Literally, it was just a whole learning process every second of the day.”

Eventually, the process of learning football evolved from an excuse for a fresh start in the U.S. to a potential career path. As he played more and worked more and learned more, Hassanein decided that football was all he wanted to do.

First, he told Besch. Then he told Olson. The goal wasn’t just to play in high school or college. The goal was the NFL.

“It’s everything for him,” Besch said. “I mean, his identity was 100 per cent (football) once he got here, there was no other motivation. And it’s weird because the goal wasn’t to send him here to become a football player, but we knew that was going to be part of it, because that’s what our lives consist of. But I didn’t ever necessarily expect him to take it on so personally and for it to become his passion.”

Clarity and confidence

The challenges Hassanein faced were immense. Not only was he brand new to the sport that he wanted to play professionally, but he also went to a school that was not exactly a football powerhouse.

It took a little time for Hassanein to realize exactly what it would mean to lift himself to the lofty heights of Division 1 football, let alone the NFL. It was a conversation with Besch that made it click.

“He’s telling me, ‘This is what I want to do. I want to be a Division I football player.’ And I’m seeing him maybe not being as motivated and really understanding what that looks like, because it’s not just working out, right? It’s everything you do,” Besch said.

“If you’re going to be that type of guy, it’s got to show up in the way you carry yourself around the house, around school, pick up after yourself – just how you handle responsibility. And I was getting frustrated as his brother, because I’m seeing him not doing that.

“So, I remember telling him one day, I said, ‘Bro, I need you to do me a favor. I have homework for you.’ And he goes, ‘What is it?’ I said, ‘It’s football homework. I want you to think about: ‘What does it take? What is the number one player in the country doing every day?’ If you were to imagine a Division I football prospect does every single day, write it down right from the time he wakes up to the time he goes to sleep. What does his day look like?

“And so he did. He wrote out a list: He wakes up early, he eats healthy, he takes his vitamins, he drinks water, he does this, he studies, he watches film and all these things. And then I told him, ‘OK, now that list you just made, compare that to what you do every day.’ How much of this are you doing? Because it’s great to say it, right? It’s a whole other thing to actually do it, because it’s not easy, or everyone would do it.”

Hassanein’s response to that conversation was simple: “OK, I get it.”

Olson said that from that point on, he’d never seen a player work as hard. Hassanein put on 20 or 25 pounds of muscle each year of high school, woke up at 5 a.m. for workouts, watched film constantly and practiced his craft.

“I don’t think I’ve had anybody just put that much work out, but he doesn’t know any other way,” Olson said. “I’ve never seen him do anything half ass. He has one speed. He’s the guy in practice that you hate because he doesn’t go half speed. He is old school, an old school kind of a guy. And he’s an absolute worker.”

After his junior season, with the scholarship offers still not coming in the way that they wanted, Hassanein had to deal with a new obstacle: The Covid-19 pandemic.

The virus closed down high school athletics across California and suddenly it seemed like Hassanein’s best opportunity to make a good impression – the summer camp circuits where high school players regularly get discovered – might go out the window. After months of sending tapes around and trying to get in touch with college coaches, Hassanein and Besch finally found an opportunity to showcase his skills at a camp about 30 minutes away from their home.

Besch told Hassanein that it was his best shot at getting recruited, and he sold his brother to anyone who’d listen, including as they’re filling out the paperwork to register for the camp.

“I’m basically selling him to these guys. I see a scout in the background, and his ears perk up when I say that he’s only been playing football for two years,” Besch said. “He’s from Egypt, and nobody knows who he is. The scout literally audibly says, ‘Well, that’ll change after today,’ like he says that in the background, and that’s when I knew. I was like, OK, he’s passing the eye test.”

A standout performance at that camp against some of the state’s top prospects got the ball rolling. But it was an old connection from college and a video of Hassanein working out in a mask that started his path to Boise.

‘Coach, I trust you’

Danielson was the defensive line coach for Boise at the time and happened to come across a video of Hassanein on social media. When Hassanein told Besch that Danielson had sent him a message, it seemed the pieces were falling into place.

Besch and Danielson played together in college at Azusa Pacific and were friends, though they had grown apart in the years since school. But the connection still existed and Besch reached out to Danielson to try and get his old friend truly interested in his brother.

“He was sending me videos of literally him in a garage, pass rushing, striking,” Danielson said of Besch.

The coach remained skeptical. Besch is a great athlete but he was built more like an undersized slot receiver than a defensive end.

“You hear that he’s 6’3”, 215, but you’re like, is he really?” Danielson said. “You get him next to a door frame, right? You’re like, trying to figure out exactly how big he is.”

Besch tried to sell his half-brother on Boise as other schools came calling, but all it took was a virtual tour – no on-campus visits were allowed due to Covid – for Hassanein to sign up to head to Idaho.

On a virtual call with Danielson, Hassanein decided to commit. He didn’t tell Besch he was doing it, and it seemed out of the blue.

“Just in Ahmed fashion he said, ‘Coach, I trust you. I don’t know anything about Boise, Idaho. I don’t really know even much about football, but I trust you and that you’re going to help me become the best version of myself,’” Danielson said.

Still the nerves over how big Hassanein really was – was he really six-foot-three when his brother was about half a foot shorter? – were present throughout the Boise defensive coaching staff.

“I knew what time he was being dropped off, and me and our entire staff were waiting to see him get dropped off to make sure he was 6’3”,” Danielson said. “We’re like, ‘Please don’t be 5’11,” like, did we just get hoodwinked? And he pops out of the car and looks like a Greek god. And I’m like, ‘Yep, we’re good boys.’”

For Besch, it was a time of mixed emotions – he was thrilled for his brother, but now it was no longer his time to be Hassanein’s personal coach. He had to trust the staff at Boise to keep him growing. But he figured Hassanein was in good hands.

“Knowing that Spencer was the guy helped me immensely, because I knew that if there was one person I could entrust, you know, not just the development of him as a football player, but the development of his character … I knew he was going to be a positive person under Spencer Danielson,” he said.

Breaking out

After getting some time as a true freshman – becoming the first Egyptian player in FBS history – and playing in 12 games as a second-stringer as a sophomore, Hassanein finally got a chance to start as a junior at Boise. He seized that opportunity with gusto.

He turned in a first-team all-Mountain West Conference season, ranking fifth in the FBS with 12.5 sacks, making 53 total tackles including 16.5 for loss and forced two fumbles.

It was the moment those close to him had been waiting for.

“Before his junior year, you saw a lot of talent, but you saw a very robotic person that was a pleaser and trying to do exactly what he was told to do,” said Erik Chinander, who took over as the defensive line coach at Boise late in 2022.

“And somewhere in that next fall camp before his junior year, kind of when he had that breakout year, you saw him stop thinking and playing a little bit more freely, and taking what people were giving him instead of exactly what he was coached to do or exactly what the playbook said.”

The change was noticeable to Olson, who drove more than four hours to catch Boise’s game against Fresno State in the 2023 season. Olson said he waited to greet Hassanein outside the locker room at the stadium after the game, and what he saw from Hassanein’s teammates made clear that something special was going on.

“The way the guys treated him was he was the guy,” Olson said. “And I called his brother, who was back in Boise. I go, Cory, I’m sitting there, and he had had about eight sacks by then, and I think it was about three quarters of the way through the season. I told Cory, ‘I’m standing outside the locker room, and he didn’t see me, and I’m just watching the guys interact with him.’ I go, ‘He’s the guy, Cory.’”

For Besch, that 2023 season was the realization of all the work he and his brother had done in those kitchen technique sessions, the still-not-close-to-finished product starting to look like a star.

It was a year later that he realized his brother was really going to have a solid chance at being a professional because he kept succeeding even though defenses were starting to game plan against Hassanein.

“I knew that, as a football coach, it’s great to have a breakout season but the next year is going to be exponentially more difficult because every single coach on the other side of the ball is game planning for you,” he said. “You’re going to get all the attention, you’re going to get all the double teams, you’re going to get all the chippers, and you’re still going to have to perform if you want to make it, because this is Boise State. You don’t get to have a down year. You need to have, you know, eight, nine sacks and continue to progress, or else you fall off the cliff.

“And when he started doing it, still, (with a) sack in Oregon early in the game. It’s like if you’re doing it against those guys, then you can do it against anybody.”

That production on the field was created by an incredible devotion to his game off of it. Hassanein became known around Boise as one of the hardest working players on the team, someone who was devoted to getting better each and every day and was simply grateful for the opportunity to play.

“He puts in a ton of time, not only in getting to the building early to get his body ready, get his nutrition right, all those kinds of things, but like, he’s always in the film room,” Chinander said.

“And it’s not just busy work for him. He’s in there, and he’ll come grab us and want to ask questions, like real questions. He’s got multiple notebooks that are full of coaching points he’s got from the head coach, from me, from Coach (Jabril) Frazier. You know, it’s one thing you’ve got to be careful (about) with Ahmed – is he is going to write down what you say? So you’ve got to choose your words wisely, because he will write it down.”

Danielson called him “the most grateful young man you’ll ever be around,” a player who would thank coaches after a hard day of practice, get coffee for staff, treat everyone around him with respect.

“He’s got the football skillset, the talent that I think means he’s gonna be a long-time NFL pro,” Danielson said before the draft, “but he is going to immediately change the culture of the NFL team he goes to, because of how grateful he is, because of the kind of teammate he is.”

A lot of room left to grow

The knock on Hassanein among draft prognosticators was that he’s still a pretty raw prospect, not the kind of guy who’s going to come in on day one and start blowing away NFL offensive linemen.

But those close to him say give him a couple years and he might be one of the best edge rushers in football.

“He’s going to be a guy who’s going to get drafted here in the next few days that you know may not start quite at the level of some other guys,” Chinander said before the draft, “but as you draft him and you’re working with him for the next early portion of his career, he’s going to get better and better and better. And where he’s at now – it’s not even close to where he’ll finish his NFL career.”

Besch, who knows him best, believes his half-brother has reached about 70 per cent of his potential.

“That’s the secret of the draft, to be honest. I have a unique perspective as a football coach and as his brother and seeing where he’s at, I would say he’s 70 per cent of his potential,” Besch said days before his brother’s selection. “If you take that ability and that coachability, and relentless effort and motor and desire to grow and develop, and you give it to an NFL coach who actually wants to develop him … the sky’s the limit.”

As NFL scouts and executives prepped ahead of the draft, they well aware of all the players who they could have at training camp this summer as a part of their team.

But if they needed one final sales pitch from Danielson, he’s happy to give it.

“Ahmed can play in any defense you want,” he said a day before the draft’s first round. “He can be a four-down D-end, he can be an outside linebacker in the 3-4. That’s uncommon. I’ve been here for nine years, and we put out a lot of edge guys in the NFL, and we’ve had some of the top defenses in the country, and he’s been the best edge guy that we’ve had, that (is) not only violent in the run game but can absolutely impose his will on tight ends and offensive tackles.

“And I would urge people to watch Oregon and Penn State, watch those games. Watch the top tight end in the country and see how that went against Ahmed. I mean, just watch it.”

Hassanein’s history-making place as the first Egyptian ever selected in the draft is something he’ll wear with pride, Chinander said. It will be the culmination of a long, unexpected journey that ultimately Hassanein has made on his own, but one in which so many other people feel incredibly invested.

Olson, his high school football coach who believes Hassanein is as fine a young man he’s ever come across in his 34 years of coaching, said he gets tears in his eyes watching his former player succeed on the field.

“That’s why I get emotional. It’s just, I’m just so happy for him. He’s worked his butt off. And a lot of times you don’t see that,” Olson said. “You don’t see guys reap the fruits of their labor. And hopefully he will – somehow, whether he gets drafted or not – somebody will pick him up and he’ll make it just because of the guy he is.”

Article by Kyle Feldscher.