It’s official: After the Las Vegas franchise obtained the exclusive negotiating rights to ex-Bills QB J.P. Losman, the former first-round selection has signed with the team, instantly becoming the United Football League’s marquee player to date.

The 28-year-old Losman, Tulane’s team captain, was drafted 22nd overall by the Bills in 2004. His physical ability was highly touted, but he never quite fulfilled his potential — he had a 10-23 won-lost record as a starter — although it appeared in flashes. In his one full season as a starter in 2006, he threw for 3,051 yards and 19 touchdown passes, boasting a passer rating of 84.9. However, he lost the starting job to rookie Trent Edwards in ‘07.

I caught up with ex-Giants head coach Jim Fassel, who will man the helm for the Las Vegas franchise, while he was vacationing on the Jersey Shore. I had a chance to ask him how he felt about the Losman signing, as well as a few other questions about the UFL, Michael Vick and his experience with resurrecting the careers of quarterbacks:

PFW: How much have you been in communication with J.P.?

Fassel: Well, I talked to him twice today. I feel great. I mean this with all sincerity: I think the guy has tremendous talent. Tremendous talent. My meetings with him prior to this, I’ve been very impressed with him and where he is mentally and what kind of guy he is. I have the utmost confidence in him. I actually feel very lucky to have him playing for me in the United Football League. I think he’s going to be a great player.

PFW: So he’s not bitter about the situation?

Fassel: No, and that is a great question, and I’ve had a lot of people ask me that. That is a great question because that is so critical to me. If I felt like he was bitter or he was just angry, I don’t know that I want him on my team. He’s not. He really accepts the challenge, and that’s what sold me on him. You know, he’s excited about it and he wants to prove himself. … To me, that is without a doubt the starting point to getting better. You don’t wallow around in anger, you wallow around in trying to be really, really good.

PFW: A lot of his critics say he’s kind of egotistical. Is any of that carrying over into the UFL?

Fassel: Tell me a great quarterback that isn’t egotistical. I honestly believe it. Everybody portrays himself a little differently.

PFW: But can you qualify him as a great quarterback?

Fassel: I think at the end of the day, yeah, they will say that. Listen, I haven’t made any of them [see next question], I’ve just been fortunate to be around them. But he has the qualifications. You know what? Honestly I mean this sincerely, if you don’t have a quarterback that has tremendous self-confidence — and athletic ability — they don’t survive.

PFW: You have a pretty impressive history of working with quarterbacks like John Elway, Phil Simms and Boomer Esiason, and you resurrected Kerry Collins’ career. Do you think that has anything to do with Losman signing with Las Vegas? Do you think he looked at that and said ‘Maybe this is my shot to get back in?'

Fassel: Well, yeah. I talked to him and his agent Gary Wichard and that was their surmise was that you’ve resurrected more than one guy’s career. Not that his career has been a bust, but he needs to get back on track to prove what he is. I wouldn’t have signed off to do it unless I thought he was capable of doing it, which I felt at the end of the day he could. They all need a little retooling; every one of them has been a little different.

Even John Elway when I went to Denver. I had been back there like three days and John goes, “You know, there’s a lot of pressure on you.” I go, “What? Wait a minute, I just got here.” … I already had the trust of John and that’s so important. I mean, to me, it is so critical that the quarterback has confidence in who’s handling him.

PFW: From what you’ve gathered, does J.P. have that confidence in you?

Fassel: Yeah. We hit it off right away. We had a full day of talking about football, going to lunch, talking more football, about quarterbacking, how it’s supposed to be done, his development stage. And before I met with him that day, I watched a lot of games on him. I mean a lot of games on him. As well as (being) able to talk to him. And I wanted to do it for more than one reason. I wanted him to have confidence in me that I see the good things, [what] I think he can change and all that. But (what) impressed me more than anything else — the way we started this conversation — was he wasn’t bitter, he just wanted to be good.

PFW: So is he ready to jump in there and do everything he needs to do?

Fassel: Oh, yeah. I mean, one of his first questions was: “When can we get started?” I said, “I’ll tell you what, here’s my schedule.” He came over, we did some work, did some throwing. I hadn’t had a break so I went on vacation. I’m getting back Monday, he’s going to be in Phoenix Tuesday.

PFW: What’d you work on? What’s your main focus?

Fassel: Well, I mean, I think the biggest mistake anybody tries to make coaching a quarterback is to make them all robotic. “I got a way that I think guys should throw the football, so I gotta make you that way.” That’s wrong, because they’re all physiologically different — just the flexibility, the motion. You don’t change them. You don’t take Tiger Woods’ swing and change it to make him look like somebody else. You know what it needs to kind of look like from a fundamental standpoint, and you groove it from there. But you let them all be who they are, you just try to streamline them. … What you try to do is streamline the process, and you try to get rid of wasted movement and you try to get them mentally where they need to be. That’s the bottom line.

PFW: So what’s the biggest thing you’re working on, just the (throwing) motion?

Fassel: I think there’s some things in his drop that can streamline it. He’s got a good motion. He’s got a cannon of an arm.

(His ex-quarterbacks coach in Buffalo, Turk Schonert) said “Jim, you might be the perfect guy for him, because you’re a no-nonsense guy. You draw the line. This is how we’re doing it, don’t vary from it, do it. That will be perfect for him, and he will respond to you very well. I don’t have anything bad to say about the guy, but it will be a good move for him to get with you.”

PFW: So do you think he needs some time to mature?

Fassel: You’ve got some good questions … One of the great quotes of all time is: “It’s not what happens to you in your life, it’s how you react to it.” That’s what makes people successful … He doesn’t blame people. He doesn’t put his circumstance on somebody else. He wants to get better. He’s hungry to improve. And that’s where I can come in as a coach. If a guy’s sitting there and blaming everything bad that’s happened to him on somebody else, I can’t do a damn thing about it. So, he’s open to coaching, he’s open to getting better, he’s motivated to get better, he’s motivated to be the best. Well, then that opened my ears. Then I said, “OK, well then we can do some stuff.” But if he was gonna sit there and blame everything that’s ever happened to him in his life on someone else, I’d probably tell him, “I can’t do anything for you.”

Check back tomorrow for the remainder of my conversation with Fassel, including his views on Vick possibly returning to the NFL.