Allen Park — Ahmed Hassanein has one goal this summer, and that’s to make history.
But if he’s able to earn a spot on the Lions’ 53-man roster in September, and eventually become the first Egyptian to play in an NFL regular-season game, the 23-year-old defensive end also could make his father’s dream come true.
“Because there’s nothing he wants more than just to watch me play football,” said Hassanein, a 2025 sixth-round pick out of Boise State whose emotional phone call with head coach Dan Campbell was one of the best moments of last year’s NFL draft. “He has never seen me play in person. And I just pray one day that he’ll get that chance.”
Chances are, you know Hassanein’s backstory by now, and the circuitous path he took to get here. Born in southern California, where his father operated a successful international textile business, Hassanein was raised in Cairo before moving back to the U.S. at the age of 16, after his elder siblings convinced his father he needed a change of scenery.
But now that backdrop has changed dramatically, and on this Father’s Day weekend, it’s the son who’s busy trying to arrange a different kind of family reunion this fall. Hopefully, around a football game. And if it can’t happen in Detroit, as his father, 71-year-old Hassenein Mahdy Hassenein, has had difficulty in securing a U.S. travel visa, perhaps it’ll be in Germany, where the Lions will play an international game in mid-November. In either case, the family has hired an immigration attorney to help.
“It would mean a lot for me,” the elder Hassanein says, speaking by phone from his home in Egypt. “Once I do this, I will start to cry.”
If the tears come easily for these two, it’s for good reason.
Ahmed’s mother was in and out of his life growing up, and while he prefers not to revisit some of her addiction issues and abusive behavior, he credits his dad for “being my mother and father” as he split much of his childhood between a high-rise apartment in a Cairo suburb and the family farm outside the city.
Ahmed helped take care of the cattle, goats and chickens there, and he speaks fondly of the freedom he enjoyed as a self-described “farm boy” in Egypt. But he kept getting in trouble at school — “I wasn’t really the best-behaved kid, to be honest with you,” he admits — and didn’t really find much direction until he threw himself into sports as a teenager. Soccer, swimming, boxing, judo, he tried it all. But it was in CrossFit competition that he truly thrived, enjoying both the “community” and the “reassurance” it brought as he became the sport’s top-ranked athlete in Egypt.
Still, Hassanein’s two older sisters, Gigi and Aziza Ibrahim, were convinced he’d be better off moving back to the U.S. to finish his education. Gigi is a well-known former journalist and activist who gained prominence during the Egyptian Revolution in 2011, while Hassanein’s half-brother, Cory Besch, was a high school English teacher and assistant football coach at Loara High School in Anaheim, California, at the time. And what Besch, now 38, describes as a “spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment” plan hatched on a visit to Cairo nearly a decade ago proved to be a life-changing decision for all.
Catches on fast to football
Hassanein barely spoke English when he returned to the U.S. as a 16-year-old sophomore, and he’d begin learning the rules of football — “I only knew people were running and hitting each other,” he laughs — in the same trial-and-error fashion that he’d learn the language. Grabbing a quarterback by the facemask and throwing him to the ground? Not allowed, apparently. And when his coach would get frustrated by all the penalty flags he drew, Hassanein would ask him earnestly, “Are you sad to me?”
The Egyptian kid proved to be a quick study, though. And with his athletic gifts and his brother’s guidance, Hassanein earned a Division I scholarship to play at Boise State, where he developed into a dominant edge defender, a team captain and a Mountain West Scholar-Athlete. None of this came as a surprise to the man who knew him best, even as he watched from 7,500 miles away.
“He’s a ‘challenge’ guy,” his father said. “He was a quiet boy, but he knew what he wanted. And whatever he puts in his mind, he do — in sport, in education, in everything.”
In Detroit, the challenge is obvious. Trying to make the Lions’ roster was tough enough even before the front office went out and added some top-level talent at his position this spring, signing a veteran starter in D.J. Wonnum and a former first-round pick in Payton Turner in free agency and then using a second-round draft pick on Michigan’s Derrick Moore.
Hassanein’s own development was slowed last year by a torn pectoral muscle the rookie suffered in an August preseason game. That sidelined him for more than two months, and since the Lions released him with an injury settlement, he was free to sign elsewhere when healthy.
Hassanein carries a special designation as part of the NFL’s International Player Pathway program, meaning he’s exempted from offseason and practice-squad roster limits. But once he’s on a 53-man roster, that goes away. The Tennessee Titans offered to sign him to their active roster last November, but he declined that opportunity after a conversation with Lions general manager Brad Holmes.
“I was like, ‘Man, you picked me, you guys believed in me. I’m not going anywhere,’” said Hassanein, who racked up 22 sacks over his final two seasons in college. “And he reassured me that he wants me here. He sees a future with me here.”
Albeit in a slightly different role, it seems, as Hassanein spent the last few months transitioning to play the “big end” position in the Lions’ defensive front. He revamped his diet and added more lean muscle mass over the winter while training locally with David Lawrence, the private strength coach for All-Pro teammate Aidan Hutchinson. And that work hasn’t gone unnoticed, though everyone knows the real test for Hassanein and his non-stop motor will come when training camp begins in late July.
“He’s been a pleasant surprise this spring,” said Kacy Rodgers, the Lions’ defensive line coach. “He just wants to play: ‘Coach, just put me wherever.’ … He just wants to do whatever is asked of him and go from there.”
Like father, like son
And here is where the two generations start to sound alike.
“I feel like God has a good plan for me,” said Hassanein, who was raised a Muslim but converted to Christianity in college. “All I want is a chance, and that’s what this is. I have my shot right now, and it’s up to me.”
Over the phone, his father’s voice crackles with the same intensity as he explains, “He’s a believer, in every way, in every respect. If he believes this is what he will do, he will do it. If he wants to reach this level, he will reach it.”
He mentions his son’s draft-day video that went viral, as a teary-eyed Hassanein told Campbell, “I just wanted you to believe in me, Coach. I’ll die on that field for you. I promise I will.” And his father says now, “Trust me, I believe him. He’s loyal. He’s something else.”
He laughs as he continues, though, recalling some of those early phone conversations when Ahmed was just discovering the game. The teenager watched hours of YouTube videos to learn pass-rush moves, and one time he paused to ask Besch which high school a player attended.
“And he was like, ‘Bro, that’s the National Football League,’” Ahmed said, smiling.
It wasn’t just any NFL player, either. It was the Los Angeles Rams’ Aaron Donald, the reigning defensive player of the year.
“So he said, ‘I want to be like this guy,’” his father adds proudly, noting that his son switched his jersey to No. 99 this spring — the number Donald wore. “This is how he thinks.”
Meanwhile, Ahmed, whose younger brother, Ibrahim, still lives with his father in Egypt, thinks it’s pretty funny to listen to their old man talk football now. He gets riled up reading coverage of the Lions online or hearing the analysts’ commentary on TV. And he’ll break down 4-3 and 3-4 fronts the same way he used to talk about soccer formations as a player for a second-division Egyptian club team.
“I didn’t know anything about the sport, but I learned the teams, I learned all the rules,” his father says. “I love it.”
What they’d both love more than anything, though, is for him to see his son play it. And to meet his wife, Payson, whom he met in college and proposed to on the day he was drafted. The two were married last July at a small wedding with family and friends on her parents’ farm in Hailey, Idaho. Ahmed’s father was unable to attend, and when they FaceTimed that day, his father was dressed in a suit for the occasion.
“That moment really got me — I broke down,” Ahmed said. “It’s been really tough not seeing my dad, just because he has missed out on so much.”
He hasn’t been back to Egypt since 2022, and tentative plans to make the trip there with his wife this offseason were scrapped amid travel warnings due to the war in Iran. Instead, they’ll take their delayed honeymoon now, Ahmed says. And they’ll all hold their cheers and their tears — “Don’t make me cry,” the father says again, when asked about the wait — for the fall.
john.niyo@detroitnews.com
@JohnNiyo
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Niyo: Father’s wish fuels Lions’ Ahmed Hassanein’s fire
Reporting by John Niyo, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By John Niyo, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
