49ers’ front office faces a test with domestic violence arrest
All those warm and fuzzies we were feeling about the 49ers on Friday afternoon? Check that. Not so fast.
That’s what one weekend can do on the NFL landscape. Optimism can give way to bitter cynicism in 48 hours.
The glow from the Jimmy Garoppolo nuptials faded with the news that Reuben Foster, the 49ers’ 23-year-old linebacker who’s considered a cornerstone for the future, was arrested in Los Gatos on Sunday morning on charges of domestic violence, threats and possession of an assault weapon. The Mercury News reported multiple sources saying that Foster’s girlfriend alleged that, after he threw her belongings onto a front walkway, he physically dragged her from the house.
This sounds all too familiar, right? Talented player. A disturbing pattern of problems and bad judgment. An arrest
for an awful crime.
These are the type of problems that plagued the 49ers during the Trent Baalke years as general manager, when the team routinely led the league in arrests. When they made excuses far too often and gave second chances over and over.
Will the 49ers cut Foster? Will they hem and haw? How different is the new leadership? What have the 49ers learned from their chronic mismanagement of cases like former 49ers Aldon Smith and Ray McDonald, who both had multiple arrests?
Last spring, the 49ers were faced with a similar situation when starting defensive back Tramaine Brock was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence. The 49ers did their own investigation and released him the next day.
“There was enough there that we felt it was the decision we had to make and move on from,” general manager John Lynch said then.
The charges were eventually dropped, and Brock ended up with the Minnesota Vikings.
Foster is a far different situation. This regime drafted him, despite his failed drug test at the NFL combine, a national scouting event, and his getting kicked out of the combine after an altercation with a hospital employee. Those issues, along with medical concerns, caused him to fall in the draft, so the 49ers were able to select him late in the first round. At the time they were thrilled. They believed they had found a linebacker they could build their defense around.
At times last season, Foster looked like the best player on the field. But he was plagued by injury problems, and the overriding question seemed to be whether he could stay healthy.
Now the question is whether he can stay out of trouble. Whether he’s one of those chronic bad guys like Smith or former Carolina Panther and Dallas Cowboy Greg Hardy, who also faced charges for assault.
Last month, Foster was arrested for marijuana possession in Alabama. That’s the kind of crime the Bay Area — where marijuana is legal — would shrug at.
Domestic violence is an entirely different issue. The call to police reportedly came from Foster’s longtime girlfriend.
The charges include threats. According to the California penal code, a criminal threat occurs when someone threatens to commit a crime that will result in death or great bodily injury to another person. The charges also include possession of an assault weapon.
We are at a different point in time than we were a couple of seasons ago. For one thing, 49ers fans are tired and wary of these kind of charges, having learned from history that where there is the smoke of an arrest, there is almost always a fire that can’t be contained.
In addition, this is a different time in history. The #MeToo moment that has roiled the country illustrates the danger of failing to believe victims, of trying to ignore or bury issues like these. Of the moral failure of putting talent — athletic, artistic, political or corporate — ahead of decent behavior. It is not acceptable.
Whatever the 49ers do, Foster will likely face a suspension by the league, which has historically been far too slow to deal with the issue. Under the NFL’s domestic violence policy, beefed up after it botched its handling of the Ray Rice case four years earlier, players are given a six-game suspension for a first incident and a lifetime ban for a second. Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott served a suspension last year due to accusations, even though he was never charged with domestic violence.
The 49ers have their own network of law enforcement contacts in the community and can probably quickly investigate the Foster situation on their own.
What they choose to do with the information will be a test of this team’s character, its direction.
And it will be a test of its ability to learn from the lessons of the past and show a different, better kind of leadership.