It’s been four days since Arian Foster created a stir with his tweet about fantasy football players following Foster’s recent hamstring injury.
“Those sincerely concerned, I’m doing OK & plan to B back by opening day. 4 those worried abt your fantasy team, u ppl are sick,” Foster wrote.
We said at the time that we had no problem with Foster’s comments whatsoever. Too often fans and Twitter followers will treat a player as if he’s not human, and it’s only fair for Foster to respond. As a human.
The entire episode has stuck in my mind the last few days, and I wanted to revisit it because it’s a shame if people get the wrong impression of Foster. He’s one of the most thoughtful, incisive players in the league whether it’s on Twitter or speaking to the media.
Foster is the type of player that can hilariously make Colin Cowherd look like a bigger child than Cowherd already is. Foster is the type of player to tweet an MRI of his hamstring.
“I put nothing but positive thoughts and energy out on here, but look at what gets the attention,” Foster wrote. “This reiterates my original point.”
It’s a great point and one I try to keep in mind. There are times I can be too cynical or unfair to players as a writer. Foster was just sticking up for himself.
“What I was saying that people who value a digital game over a human being’s health is just kind of weird to me,” Foster said this week. “And that’s all that I meant by that, and people took it as, oh, I don’t care about fantasy football. I think it’s good for the game. It gets people that don’t really watch into it. I’m on my mother’s fantasy football team, so I’ve got to do good.”
Foster has a problem with fans that don’t seem to fully grasp he’s just another guy, not a set of statistics.
One fan wrote to Foster that without fantasy football, Foster “would be cleaning toilets.” The fan told Foster he hopes he gets seriously hurt. We’ve read, and tried to delete, plenty of comments on PFT that hope for players to get seriously injured.
When you think about how many similar comments Foster probably received, his response seems remarkably mature.