‘No guarantee’ for Foster with ’Skins
ASHBURN, VA. — After deciding to give Reuben Foster an immediate second chance following his domestic violence arrest, the Washington Redskins say they’ll continue to investigate the 24-year-old’s legal problems and are making no assurances he’ll ever play for them given the obstacles he must clear to return.
Foster is currently on the NFL’s Commissioner Exempt list and cannot play in games or practice following his arrest Saturday night at the San Francisco 49ers’ team hotel in Tampa. He has been charged with one count of first-degree misdemeanor domestic violence.
Washington was the only team to put in a claim for Foster after the 49ers released him Monday, the league’s latest example of an organization looking past off-field issues for potential on-field production.
Coach Jay Gruden on Wednesday acknowledged the Redskins must deal with the public criticism of adding Foster so soonafter his arrest, Butthecoachisn’t sure the second-year linebacker will actually ever suit up for Washington.
“We accept, obviously, the questions, but we want to let the process play out andsee whathappens and get to the bottom of it,” Gruden said. “There’s no guarantee he’s ever going to play here, to be honest with you. He’s got a lot of work to do — personally, with the team, with the NFL, with himself — before he even thinks about playing football again.”
Foster was arrested on a domestic violence charge last spring. Though those charges were dropped, Foster served a two-game suspension to begin this season for his arrest on a gun charge and for misdemeanor marijuana possession.
49ers coach Kyle Shanahan, who was Washington’s offensive coordinator from 2010-2013, said he was a little surprised a team claimed Foster. Gruden said it was a “team decision” made with president Bruce Allen and senior vice president of player personnel Doug Williams.
“At the end of the day we decided to make the move, and we’ll deal with the outcry, so to speak,” Gruden said. “But for the most part, this is a young athlete, a young person who got himself into some trouble, and we want to find out exactly what happened.”
Gruden said after practice Wednesday the organization did not speak to the woman involved in the incident. He did say the Redskins spoke “a little bit” to Tampa police and would continue to look into Foster’s situation at the same time as the NFL holds its investigation.
NickSaban, Foster’s coachatAlabama, said hedoesn’t know much about his situation. “Anything that we can do to help Reuben or support Reuben in any way, I think he knows we’re here for him,” Saban said. “I love to see our guys make good choices and decisions and do the right things. Hopefully people can help Reuben do that in the future so he can have an outstanding career, but I have not talked to him.”
Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, professor emerita at the University of Toronto, said it’s common and convenient for teams to suspend judgment on a player in situations such as this.
“In a very lucrative team professional sport like football, I’m not too surprised,” she said. “And it happens so frequently there’s sort of a pattern where we’ll wait until the facts are all in, we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, we don’t want to destroy his career, there’s always two sides to the story — endless excuses.” TV: Radio: