After position switch that's "more my play style," Ahmed Hassanein making noise

After sparring with tight end Thomas Gordon in a one-on-one special teams drill the other day, Ahmed Hassanein stared Gordon's way, flexed his arms and roared. Hassanein has made himself heard in the first week of camp.

Kelvin Sheppard has noticed. So has Dan Campbell. Hassanein has punctuated most of his positive plays -- and there's been several of them -- by yelling at the top of his lungs.

"Shep is loving it, Dan is loving it. Sometimes I gotta calm it down," Hassanein said with a smile after another strong showing in Tuesday's practice. "Sometimes I gotta know, OK, I gotta protect my teammates, I can’t be throwing them to the ground. But once you’re in the moment and the adrenaline is rushing, you just want to make a play, man. I want to do that consistently. I want to pop on the tape, play after play, just doing my job."

His job is different this year. The Lions have moved Hassanein from rush end to big end on their defensive line, after adding two rush ends this offseason in free agent DJ Wonnum and second-round pick Derrick Moore to complement Aidan Hutchinson. Hassanein figured the switch was coming after they drafted Moore -- "which, love him, by the way, he’s just a great dude," he said -- and he started to wonder, "Where am I going to fit?" That's when the coaches filled him in.

The switch suits Hassanein's body type and physicality. It's also the position that he played in college. After spending lots of time last season studying Hutchinson and other traditional rush ends around the NFL -- past and present -- Hassanein is back to being himself.

"Man, I’m loving it," he said. "It’s more my play style. I played big end at Boise, and the big end is the bigger guy that doesn’t have to drop in coverage, more like a hand in the dirt, dirty job, and I like to play a little dirty [as in, grimy], nose bleeding and stuff like that, so I feel like it fits my play style. And I can take those hard doubles, I’m good for it and I’m getting better at it."

He's backing it up practice. Hassanein has popped in both days with pads and is now getting consistent reps with the second team. He had a quarterback pressure and a tackle for loss in team drills Tuesday. He has made lots of plays in the backfield.

Tyler Lacy has emerged clearly as Detroit's starting big end, in line for a big role in Sheppard's defense this season. But Hassanein is working his way up the depth chart behind him, having out-played Levi Onwuzurike to this point in camp. Sheppard said a few days ago that the position switch "has been to (Hassanein's) advantage, seeing what he could provide for us there as potentially a starter, depth player or whatever that may (become)."

It's common to see Hassanenin chatting with defensive line coach Kacy Rodgers after his reps. If not Rodgers, he seeks feedback from his more experienced teammates. He's walked off the field a couple times talking with Brad Holmes. Hassanein is so driven to prove Holmes and the Lions right for drafting him that he said "I teared up talking to him" after practice on Monday.

"I love Brad," said Hassanein. "I was like, 'Man, you took a chance on me and you believed in me, and that’s all I need.' And his response was awesome. He was like, 'Ahmed, you’re proving me right by doing what you’re doing, and the big end role is going to be good for you. I’m excited for you. You're a football player.' And I told him I love him, and he said 'I love you, too.'"

Recalling this, Hassanein had to laugh. It reminded him of a funny story from his rookie season. Before every practice at Boise State, Hassanein's head coach Spencer Danielson, who first took a chance on him as a raw, unheralded recruit out of high school, would tell Hassanein, "I love you, let's go get it." Hassanein thought "it was weird at first," but it eventually rubbed off on him to the point that he brought the routine with him to Detroit.

"First year, I told Dan, I was like, ‘Hey, Coach. I love you,'" Hassanein said.

Campbell did a double take, caught entirely off guard, then pointed at him and said, "Back at you."

"And then this year, I told him I love him, and he said, ‘I love you, too.' I was telling my wife about that, 'I just got an ‘I love you, too’ from Coach Dan Campbell!'" Hassanein said with a laugh. "I tell Shep I love him before every practice. I just want to spread that, man. Love is contagious. When you love someone, you just want to tell them, you don’t want to hide that. You never know what your next opportunity (is going to be) when you tell the other person, ‘I love you, I care about you, I’ll do anything for you, I’ll die for you.'"

That's exactly what Hassanein told Campbell the night the Lions drafted him. He means it. As he said last season when he was making noise on the practice squad, "If the coaches are going in a dark alley, I want to be the guy that they'd be like, 'We're taking Ahmed with us.'"

Sheppard, for the record, always reciprocates Hassanein's words. Asked about him a few days ago, the Lions' second-year defensive coordinator said, "Man, I absolutely love that guy."

"We took Ahmed on (last year) and you all know, Ahmed only knows one way and that's full-tilt. And sometimes the offense doesn't like that, especially when we don't have on pads, but they appreciate it because they know it's real. It's not fake, it's not phony, it's not fabricated. The energy is real."

There's a long way to go in camp. Hassanein will be the first to tell you that. He likes how he's played so far, but he won't get ahead of himself. That's a quick way to halt his own progress. But the momentum is real. The Lions believe in Hassaniein, who's motivated by a desire to "prove them right, to earn my job, to earn the trust of my coaches and teammates, to be someone they can depend on."

"Maybe last year I wasn’t ready," he said. "Maybe this year I am. I’m just going to take it one day at a time and keep stacking."