With room to grow: Fusco is the Vikings' center of the future

College was fun for Brandon Fusco, and maybe not so for the defensive lineman that had to face the former Slippery Rock center. During a few games in college, he heard groans across from him — "Man, this sucks," defensive linemen would say. "I just love hearing it from linemen," Fusco said at the NFL Scouting Combine in February. "It makes you feel good. And it just pumps you up more to play better. "I felt like I dominated most of my opponents at the division-II level." He started all 44 games of his college career at center, earning D-II All-American honors his senior year as well as winning Gene Upshaw Award for the best offensive lineman at the D-II level. The 6-foot-4, 306-pound Fusco made the most of his college experience, but he didn't really have a choice coming out of Seneca Valley high school in Western Pennsylvania. During high school, he played varsity football for two years. The only reason he got to start midway through his junior year was because someone got hurt and Fusco stepped in. "If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be playing, really," Fusco admits. Two years later, Fusco was a 240-pound lineman without a college to play for. "I didn't take the weight room as seriously as I do now," Fusco said. Youngstown State said he could walk-on. Then Slippery Rock came and visited him at home. He took a liking to the coaches. And the campus was only a 30-minute drive from his home in Cranberry, Pa. The Rock, as it's called, was the right fit for Fusco. At first, he sat and he redshirted. Fusco was going to play tackle, but he had to sit behind an upperclassman, Michael Butterfield, who eventually spent two years on NFL practice squads. When spring practice started the following year, the coaches decided to move Fusco to center. It was the only spot open on a line full of seniors. "I had a great season my redshirt freshman year, and my coaches didn't want to move me from there," Fusco said. The Slippery Rock offense was based off of good inside play from its guards and center, too. So when those seniors graduated, even though Fusco had the size to play left tackle at the division II level, he became the team's rock at center. All the while, he added weight. Tuesday night, all-you-can-eat wing nights helped. By the time he was earning all of the accolades and attention from NFL scouts his senior year, he was over 300 pounds, with room to add more weight to his frame. Looking back on it now, Slippery Rock may have been the best and worst thing about Fusco as he enters the NFL as a selection of the Minnesota Vikings in the sixth-round of the draft — he developed into a reliable center and dominated opponents, but the level of competition at that level raised a bevy of other concerns. When Fusco traveled down to Mobile, Alabama for the Senior Bowl — the first player in Slipper Rock history to do so — he had to worry about picking up a playbook that was much more complex with more schemes than he had ever seen in college. "I made sure I knew the playbook before I went to bed," Fusco said of the Senior Bowl. "I can't sleep if I don't know something. Stayed up late, studying the playbook and didn't have a problem." The guys lining up across from him weren't dreading the snap either. "At first it was overwhelming seeing the guys you always see on TV playing, on ESPN and stuff like that," Fusco said. "But after the first day, I felt like I belonged with these guys. I'm confident in my game. And I improved every day, I thought. And I got good feedback from scouts." Draft evaluators said before the draft that Fusco was a good "developmental" center, one that played with a mean streak, but needed to refine some of his mechanics. He could get by at the division-II level and dominate anyways. Can the kid from Slippery Rock play with the big boys of the NFL? He shrugged the questions off, back in February, saying he has seen other division-II linemen have success. He saw the Saints' All-Pro guard Jahri Evans, who played at Bloomsberg University of Pennsylvania — another team in Slippery Rock's conference — and he is now the highest-paid guard in the NFL after being picked in the fourth-round in 2006. And Fusco saw Jared Veldheer, too, a third-round pick last year who graduated from Hillsdale College, a division-II school in Michigan, and eventually won the starting left tackle job during his rookie year. The Vikings were reportedly among a handful of teams that went and scouted Fusco multiple times before the draft. They may see it in him too. "I feel like everyone's doubting me, coming from a smaller school, they think I can't — I don't belong," Fusco said. "Everyone's got their own opinion. But I know my game. I'm very confident. And I know what I can do."