Lions’ Ahmed Hassanein is a movie character, the kind you didn’t believe existed in real life
Ahmed Hassanein is a movie character straight off the silver screen. The kind you didn’t know existed in real life. He’s also someone whose ceiling gets higher every day.
I’ve seen a lot of football movies, and there’s always this character in the football movies who is just like this. He’s an insane person. He’s a madman. A guy who’s ramming his head into the lockers and screaming and just full of rage, but a good rage. You think about Steve Latimer from The Program or guys from The Waterboy, or Goldberg in The Longest Yard. These crazy dudes who were just screaming and going nuts. And it’s like, man, that’s just a movie thing. There are no players who are actually that way.
But there is and he plays for the Detroit Lions, and his name is Ahmed Hassanein.
The Lions defensive end is exactly what you think about when you watch these movies. I’ve never seen anybody like him in real life. He has jumped right off the silver screen, right off the pages of a script. I’ve never seen him ram his head into a locker, but I wouldn’t put it past him. This guy is balls-to-the-wall, nonstop action. If Hassanein doesn’t make it in the football world, which I believe he will, he’s going to be a WWE wrestler someday. He will be a WWE champion if he wants to do that after football. It’s charisma. It’s pointed rage. It’s good rage.
Hassanein is turning heads at Lions training camp
On Monday, I watched this guy help get a stop on the goal line in red zone drills, turn around and puke in the end zone, and then scream at the top of his lungs. The crowd went crazy. He went full Droz or Willie Beamon from Any Given Sunday. Droz is the former WWE wrestler who used to play for the Broncos, famous for puking on the field before becoming famous in WWE for puking on his opponents. It’s a whole thing. I get it if you don’t remember Droz. It’s because I’m older, and yeah, I’m getting old now.
But it’s not going unnoticed. Lions coach Dan Campbell was asked about Hassanein on Tuesday, and here’s what he had to say:
“He’s had a really good camp. He is all out all the time. The guy never takes a play off, literally never takes a play off. He doesn’t take a water break off. He doesn’t. I mean, the guy is all out. Some of the things, honestly, is we just got to rein him back in a little bit. Sometimes he gets out of his mind and goes a little rogue on some stuff, but you’d rather it be that way and pull back on him than the other way where you’re constantly having to prod him. So he’s really grown, kind of moving into that big end. That was a move that was made. So he’s a little bit of an undersized big end, but it doesn’t affect him. He plays so dang hard, plays with leverage. And he has it. You know what you love about him? Like, he doesn’t cower from anything. Like, competition, man, he’s all for it. And he wants it. He wants it. He tries to prove it every day. So you like that. I’m excited to see what he does in this game.”
Hassanein is growing as a player, and his ceiling is high
Campbell is referring to the game the Lions will play Thursday against the Cincinnati Bengals. We saw a little bit of this version of Hassanein last year as a rookie. You could see he was a little more open but maybe shy at first. He’s not that guy now. If you hear someone screaming on the field, it’s Hassanein almost every single time.
It’s unbelievable to watch this movie character go out there and play as hard as he can with so much emotion and passion. Every day you hear something to the effect of this guy telling everybody how happy he is to be out there and how he’s going to prove general manager Brad Holmes right. He’s going to Holmes and saying thank you and I love you and I’m going to prove you right. He is not like other people. Again, he is a movie character. I can’t stress that enough. I don’t know if I could have written Ahmed Hassanein as a character. You would think he was too outlandish, but that’s how he is.
And it’s not just the way he acts. I watched this guy on the field, and he’s getting better. You can see it. You can see some of the stuff Campbell is talking about where he plays with his hair on fire a little too much at times, where it’s like, okay man, if you would have done this, you probably would have had a sack. But you kind of went a little crazy there for a minute, or you tried to do maybe a little too much. Once Hassanein figures it out and puts it all together on the field, he could be a problem. You could see a world where he could be a starter at some point.
I’m looking forward to seeing what he does against the Bengals on Thursday. I’ve only gotten to see this player play in the NFL once, during the Hall of Fame game last year, and it was okay. I think he’s going to have a much better first preseason game this year. I had him on the bubble coming into training camp. He’s firmly off that bubble now. He’s making the 53-man roster, and I’m not even concerned about it. Just a fun player.
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