Bronco Billy Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 Per John McClain: RT @McClain_on_NFL Texans have reached a five-year deal with RB Arian Foster. From Rotoworld: Texans agreed to terms with RB Arian Foster on a five-year contract. Financial terms aren't yet available, but the Houston Chronicle reported Saturday the $30 million guaranteed Chris Johnson landed last summer was likely to be the "starting point" in long-term talks. The move frees up the franchise tag for DE/OLB Mario Williams or C Chris Myers, but the Texans reportedly "aren't inclined" to tag either player. Foster, who was a restricted free agent, would have made $7.7 million under the franchise tag. With the Texans being among the more cap-strapped teams in the league, it's likely Foster's 2012 cap number will be lower than the tag would have guaranteed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainHook Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 I think they overpaid if the reports are true . . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delusions of grandeur Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 (edited) I think they overpaid if the reports are true . . . Keep in mind though how much he was underpaid for the services they got out of him... Even after his breakout 2010 season, I think he was still making around the league minimum last year... So as the Texans have been making millions, he probably didn't clear a million dollars in 3 years combined, as one of the top backs in the league. Same goes for Ray Rice, who deserves a big contract more than anyone.... I think sometimes people forget that contracts can also have to do with rewarding guys who've been underpaid or have been valuable enough to the team to give them a bonus beyond just their future worth. Edited March 5, 2012 by delusions of granduer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainHook Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 (edited) Yeah, but look at the difference between Lynch's contract and Foster's ($17 million guaranteed vs $30 million guaranteed??). And running backs are being de-valued in today's NFL. Foster has had one injury-free year . . . and that was the knock on him coming out of college . . . injuries . . . and they just guaranteed him $30 million? Edited March 5, 2012 by CaptainHook Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ditkaless Wonders Posted March 6, 2012 Share Posted March 6, 2012 Keep in mind though how much he was underpaid for the services they got out of him... Even after his breakout 2010 season, I think he was still making around the league minimum last year... So as the Texans have been making millions, he probably didn't clear a million dollars in 3 years combined, as one of the top backs in the league. Same goes for Ray Rice, who deserves a big contract more than anyone.... I think sometimes people forget that contracts can also have to do with rewarding guys who've been underpaid or have been valuable enough to the team to give them a bonus beyond just their future worth. Maybe Forte? Maybe not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sunday Couch Potatoe Posted March 6, 2012 Share Posted March 6, 2012 Now they get to see if he was worth it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piratesownninjas Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 Yeah, but look at the difference between Lynch's contract and Foster's ($17 million guaranteed vs $30 million guaranteed??). And running backs are being de-valued in today's NFL. Foster has had one injury-free year . . . and that was the knock on him coming out of college . . . injuries . . . and they just guaranteed him $30 million? Foster is more that twice as good as Lynch. If Beast Mode gets 17 million than Foster is worth more than 30. We're talking a good running back in Lynch to a top 2-3 in the league. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainHook Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 Foster is more that twice as good as Lynch. If Beast Mode gets 17 million than Foster is worth more than 30. We're talking a good running back in Lynch to a top 2-3 in the league. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piratesownninjas Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 I'm just saying that you can't compare a good but not great back and his contract to one of the top guys in the league. Ryan Fitzpatrick's contract has nothing to do with Tom Brady's contract, just as any comparisons between Lynch and Foster don't make sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainHook Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 I'm just saying that you can't compare a good but not great back and his contract to one of the top guys in the league. Ryan Fitzpatrick's contract has nothing to do with Tom Brady's contract, just as any comparisons between Lynch and Foster don't make sense. I would take Lynch's contract and Lynch over Foster's contract and Foster any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Foster has had ONE good injury-free year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
i_am_the_swammi Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 I would take Lynch's contract and Lynch over Foster's contract and Foster any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Foster has had ONE good injury-free year. but he also had a couple phenomal years even though he WAS injured...dude is a beast, and without question a top-3 RB in the league. Lynch is good, but c'mon, lets be real...many beleived he was toast when Buffalo let him walk...and prior to that one remarkable run versus the Saints in the playoffs two years ago, he was...well...Beanie Wells. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevegrab Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 but he also had a couple phenomal years even though he WAS injured...dude is a beast, and without question a top-3 RB in the league. Lynch is good, but c'mon, lets be real...many beleived he was toast when Buffalo let him walk...and prior to that one remarkable run versus the Saints in the playoffs two years ago, he was...well...Beanie Wells. I was thinking the same thing, wasn't Lynch all but washed up before he finally got out of Buffalo? Maybe Hooks point is that the lesser contract is worth the less production. You don't need that top 2-3 RB to win. How many recent SB winning teams had a top 5 RB? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piratesownninjas Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 I was thinking the same thing, wasn't Lynch all but washed up before he finally got out of Buffalo? Maybe Hooks point is that the lesser contract is worth the less production. You don't need that top 2-3 RB to win. How many recent SB winning teams had a top 5 RB? Who carried Houston to it's first playoff win in it's history? And if Houston wasn't running out TJ Yates and had Schaub running the show, Houston very may well have been playing in the SB. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piratesownninjas Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 (edited) I would take Lynch's contract and Lynch over Foster's contract and Foster any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Foster has had ONE good injury-free year. Ha, he's had one good? injury free year? Get real. Two years ago, the one good year you're referring to he put up 2218 yards and 18 TD's. That's an all time performance. His non good injury free year he put up 1881 yards and 12 touchdowns. Arian Foster at 14 games is still a top three RB. I don't know if it's homerism/hatred kicking in, but Foster is as elite as it gets. Seven days a week and twice on Sunday my runningback would stomp a mudhole in your runningback. I can't wait to hear you talk about how bad Calvin Johnson's new contract is and how you'd rather have Stevie Johnson every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Edited March 7, 2012 by piratesownninjas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piratesownninjas Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 The Best Runner in Football Over the past two years, Arian Foster has suited up for 29 regular-season games as the Texans' starting running back. What he's done in those games, very simply, has not been matched by anyone else in football. Across those 29 games, Foster has produced a whopping 2,840 rushing yards on only 605 attempts. Running backs just don't do that these days. At the most basic level, we can note that Foster has averaged 97.9 yards per game during those 29 games. That's more than any other player in football, and outside of Maurice Jones-Drew, no other player is within nine yards of Foster's total. He's also led the league in rushing touchdowns over that time frame, with his 26 rushing scores producing an average of nearly one per game. And among players with 400 carries or more over the past two seasons, Foster is tied for second-best in yards per carry, with only LeSean McCoy ahead of Foster's 4.7-yard rushing average. Based solely on his performance running with the football, we can safely suggest that Arian Foster has been the most productive rusher in the NFL over the past two seasons. His numbers are even more impressive, though, when we consider them in context with what other great running backs from history have done when they were 24 and 25, as Foster was over the past two years. Despite playing in an era in which the running back and the running game have been de-emphasized around the league, Foster's 97.9 rushing yards per game ranks 10th all-time among backs who carried the ball a combined 400 times or more during their age-24 and age-25 seasons. His average of 4.7 yards per carry, meanwhile, ranks an impressive 14th. In each case, Foster's performance is better than those by several Hall of Famers and recent standouts. Those cases include: IN FOSTER'S COMPANY Player Yds/Gm Rank Yds/Att Rank Arian Foster 97.9 10 4.69 14 LaDainian Tomlinson 96.1 13 4.57 18 Walter Payton 93.9 16 4.28 35 Marcus Allen 91.5 17 4.47 27 Barry Sanders 91.4 18 4.45 30 Maurice Jones-Drew 90.5 20 4.44 32 Curtis Martin 87.4 23 3.81 77 Adrian Peterson 86.5 27 4.49 25 Tony Dorsett 81.1 38 4.50 22 Can't Stop, Won't Stop Foster's 2011 performance is even more virtuous when you consider how thin the stars around him got on offense. Every running back would benefit from having Matt Schaub and Andre Johnson around them to occupy defenders, but when Schaub and Johnson (and guard Mike Brisiel) went down with injuries and missed most of the second half of the season, it was Arian Foster who stepped up to make big plays for the Houston offense. Despite playing next to a rookie quarterback and going against nine-man fronts at times, Foster's performance actually improved once T.J. Yates got into the lineup. FOSTER SPLITS Arian Foster Splits Games Atts Yds Yds/Att Yds/Gm Rush TD With Schaub 8 171 740 4.3 92.5 6 With Leinart, Yates 7 158 769 4.9 109.9 7 Those seven games without Schaub at quarterback include two playoff games in which Foster was dominant. During Houston's playoff adventure, Foster carried the ball 51 times for a whopping 285 yards, an average of nearly six yards per attempt. Arian Foster has the mental and emotional characteristics of a team leader, and his performance backs up that story. When his team needed him most, Foster strapped the Houston offense onto his back and carried it as far as any running back could. The Well-Rounded Man While some great running backs are nonentities in passing situations, Arian Foster is a dangerous weapon that can create first downs out of even the slightest lapse in defensive concentration or the smallest mismatch. Over the past two years, he's been the second option in the Houston passing game, as only Andre Johnson has averaged more catches per game than Foster. And when you combine that receiving work with Foster's performance as a ballcarrier, well, you realize just how special a player Arian Foster truly is. In addition to his 97.9-yard-per-game rushing average, Foster has chipped in with 42.1 receiving yards per game as a pass-catching threat out of the backfield. That's a total of 140.0 yards from scrimmage per game. As you might suspect, that's the most of any running back in football over the past two years, but there's more to it than that. Nobody's been able to match that total in six years, as the last guy to average 140 yards from scrimmage per game over a two-year stretch was Tiki Barber in 2005-06. Only five players have pulled that off since the turn of the millennium, and it's a who's who of multipurpose threats: Barber, Marshall Faulk, Priest Holmes, Edgerrin James, and LaDainian Tomlinson. With all that production, it's obvious that Foster is an enormous part of the Texans offense. The extent to which that is true, though, is notable. In 2010, when Foster played all 16 games, he was responsible for 35.9 percent of Houston's yardage from scrimmage, the highest such percentage in the league. In 2011, when Foster played in 13 games, he still managed to accrue 30.9 percent of his team's yardage, which was the fourth-highest percentage in the league. If we don't consider the games Foster missed and replace a gritty 40-yard performance in Week 2 from a clearly injured Foster with those two playoff games, he actually gathered 39.5 percent of Houston's yardage from the line of scrimmage by himself in that 15-game sample. Only Maurice Jones-Drew was responsible for more. Even while alongside a franchise quarterback and a world-class wide receiver, Foster has been essential to one of the league's best offenses. While we mentioned Foster's injury, it's also worth noting how durable he's been as a professional. Despite a heavy workload in 2010 and toward the end of 2011, Foster's only notable injury during his football career has been a hamstring pull that cost him part of the 2011 campaign. Foster's shown a hunger to play through minor injuries at both the college and professional levels, and unlike players who have been put through the wringer, Foster's proven production has come without the damning long-term effects of an unsustainable workload. Foster has just 659 pro carries on the board, which is nearly 50 percent fewer than the 1,198 carries Adrian Peterson received through age 25 before signing his long-term extension with the Vikings and promptly suffering a torn ACL. Foster's legs should remain fresh for years to come. Conclusion If you could put together the perfect running back on paper, what qualities would you look for? You'd want a back who was explosive and capable of big plays, but powerful and patient enough to read his blocks while making the consistent gains teams need to move the chains. You'd want a player with the receiving skills to bail out a quarterback under pressure and the pass-blocking ability to prevent that quarterback from being pressured. You'd want a player who was big enough to carry the ball without concerns about overwork, but one with a low center of gravity who slips through the sorts of lazy tackles that abound in the modern game. You'd want a back with a proven history of production who was young enough to improve. You'd want a back with the skills of a first-round pick and the hunger of an undrafted player. If you could put together the perfect running back on paper, you would draw up Arian Foster. Now, thanks to Houston's salary-cap issues and impending free agents on all sides of the ball, you've got one chance to get him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deathpig Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 There's an argument to be made that Houston would be better off letting Foster walk/trading him/whatever and playing Tate, then using the money they saved to keep Williams and/or help other problem areas on the team as the drop-off from Foster to Tate, while non-trivial, isn't apocalyptic. Especially given that they're playing in the same running system that was making undrafted/late-drafted runners look like worldbeaters for years. That's not even considering the risk at giving RBs long-term contracts with how fungible the position can be. If he has a knee injury he could lose the majority of 2 seasons of effectiveness. It's a risk, though most people likely appreciate Houston paying a very good player (and a good character guy). However... Not only was he a top FF RB playing in only 13 total games on the season, he did that with the team's top receiving threat out for most of the year and with a 3rd string rookie QB. He's pretty special, even if he doesn't have one particular talent that he's the absolute best at. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainHook Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 (edited) His non good injury free year he put up 1881 yards and 12 touchdowns. For half the price, you could have had Lynch's 1,416 yards and 13 TD's. I'm not saying that Foster isn't good. I'm just saying that is too much money in today's NFL. The top three or four running backs the last few years are arguably Adrian Peterson, MJD, Foster, and Ray Rice. None have made a Super Bowl. The last 11 years, the SB champion has been a team that has a RBBC. It's just not a position you should throw a lot of money at. And like I said, I think they overpaid. Is Foster better than Lynch? Yes. Is he $16 million guaranteed better? I'm not so sure. . . Edited March 8, 2012 by CaptainHook Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piratesownninjas Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 For half the price, you could have had Lynch's 1,416 yards and 13 TD's. I'm not saying that Foster isn't good. I'm just saying that is too much money in today's NFL. The top three or four running backs the last few years are arguably Adrian Peterson, MJD, Foster, and Ray Rice. None have made a Super Bowl. The last 11 years, the SB champion has been a team that has a RBBC. It's just not a position you should throw a lot of money at. And like I said, I think they overpaid. Is Foster better than Lynch? Yes. Is he $16 million guaranteed better? I'm not so sure. . . It's not Peterson/MJD/Rice that TJax/Favre, Flacco, and Garrard are disasters. In my mind, you pay to keep elite players, and Foster in my mind is the best runningback in the league. If Foster repeats his previous performances then he's worth it. If he goes out and pulls a Chris Johnson then that's something else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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