Bruce Allen and the Redskins took plenty of heat earlier this season when they were the only team to submit a claim for Reuben Foster, who was soon placed on the commissioner’s exempt list.
But months after the linebacker’s latest arrest, his playing future looks more promising than it did when the 49ers waived him. Foster saw another domestic violence charge dropped, and Allen now expects his controversial waiver claim to be cleared for Week 1.
“The league is still finishing their investigation of it,” Allen said, via Michael Phillips of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “I don’t know why we would expect a suspension, but we’ll let the league finish up.”
During the 2018 offseason, Foster was arrested twice — the latter for an alleged domestic assault — but ended up evading legal trouble in both cases. The NFL suspended Foster for two games. The league’s current investigation may be more complicated.
Elissa Ennis, Foster’s ex-girlfriend who was the alleged victim in multiple 2018 incidents, said in December she was not being truthful when she recanted her allegation of domestic abuse from Feb. 2018. Ennis said during the same interview she was stunned the Redskins claimed Foster, whom she claims struck her on three separate occasions. This came days after another arrest for alleged domestic violence, which prompted the 49ers to cut ties with Foster. Since Foster’s most recent suspension, a 911 call came because of what a neighbor described as a “loud disturbance” from Foster’s Santa Clara, Calif., home in October. Ennis was with Foster that night.
The Redskins’ statement said the team talked to Foster’s ex-Alabama teammates for character references, but multiple players soon said they were not asked about Foster. Allen now said that was by design.
“Yeah, we do talk to our players quite a bit. We don’t want our players discussing what we discuss with them,” Allen said, via Phillips. “We’ve talked about players in this upcoming draft, and they won’t discuss it. We’ve talked to people at Alabama. We’ve talked to a number of people.
“Not going to get into what we investigated, but we felt comfortable that we knew the player and the person involved. Reuben has demonstrated since he’s been with us that he wants to play football, he wants to do things the right way, and he wants to be a valuable member not only of the Redskins on the field but off the field as well.”
Foster still resides on the exempt list. Two years remain on his rookie contract. Another ban, potentially lengthier than 2018’s, remains possible for the 24-year-old defender.
I think we are going to see more and more owners resenting Goodell trying to restrict them from running their organizations as they would like to. Goodell tried to prohibit the Chiefs from doing their own investigation of Hunt but allowed the Redskins to conduct an investigation of Foster. It’s just another example of Goodell arbitrarily deciding policy on the fly to serve his own needs.
There certainly as much evidence against Foster as there was against Ezekiel Elliott and he was slapped with 6 games.
Foster has already lost games. Time served.
Personally, I tend to disregard everything that Goodell reports as “evidence” in investigations. The NFL wants their own propaganda to be the only kool-aid available for public consumption.