Andre Iosivas scored his first NFL receiving touchdown during the Bengals’ Week 6 victory over the Seahawks. The ludicrously fast sixth-round pick from Princeton demonstrated his potential during the preseason, raising his status in the squad. “It felt like it was almost a perfect situation to come into,” Iosivas talked to AZ Sports about signing for the Bengals. “I come in with the best quarterback in the league and the best receiving room in the league.”
Andre Iosivas is of Romanian and Filipino descent; he grew up in Hawaii
Andre Iosivas was born on 15th October 1999 to a Romanian father and a Filipino mother. He is of mixed ethnicity.
Mihai Iosivas, the wide receiver’s father, grew up in Romania during the Soviet era. Several years after the Berlin Wall fell, he moved to Japan to work as a software engineer. There, he met Evelyn ‘Bing’ Iosivas and married her. Evelyn was a model and translator who spoke Japanese, Tagalog, and English.
Iosivas was four, and his younger brother, Alexandru, was two when the family moved to Hawaii. His football journey began a year later. “Football is his first love … He only wanted to run track to get faster as he started playing football,” Mihai told bengals.com. “I told him, ‘You’re already the fastest.’ But he wanted more.” Iosivas was known as the ‘Romanian Rocket’ or ‘Romanian Missile’ due to his speed.
The Bengals star compared his journey to his father’s. “Like him [Mihai], it took time,” Iosivas said. “You have to set your goals and you have to basically take a step every day. Otherwise, sometimes when you think the goal is too big, you’re afraid to make the first step because it’s overwhelming. But it doesn’t matter how big it is, it doesn’t matter how hard it is.”
Mihai told bengals.com that his biggest accomplishment is his children. He reiterated that the family will continue supporting Iosivas as he acclimatizes to the NFL and hopefully has a long career. The software engineer said:
“It’s a big move. No family, nobody, just moved from Princeton to Cincinnati. It’s a big adjustment. He’s tough. He knows exactly how to approach the whole process. But if I give him a little bit more mental safety by being around, I like to do that.”