Saban says Robert Foster could be better from sitting most of last year
There was a time when Nick Saban wasn’t a good shooter.
By his own admission, Saban, whose game’s of pick-up basketball inside Coleman Coliseum are the stuff of legend, could’t consistently make a jump shot in high school.
What does any of this have to do with the University of Alabama’s spring football practices?
Well, Saban likened an experience from that time to explain why and how Robert Foster, a talented wide receiver who missed the last 12 games of the 2015 season with a shoulder injury, could be a better player because his injury forced him to watch the game from a different perspective.
“I think sometimes you can learn a lot when you don’t play,” Saban said. “Some people think that you have to get a lot of reps to really learn, but sometimes…I tell the story about my senior year in high school. We won the state championship, and in the state championship game, I had a chipped bone in my ankle and they put a cast on it for six weeks.
“We went right from football to basketball so I had to sit and watch them practicing and running above the basket. I could never shoot very well. I was always a point guard, handling the ball, running the fastbreak, did all that, but I couldn’t shoot very well and I used to sit up in the top of the armory above the basket and see how the big the basket was, looking above instead of below.
“So I developed a lot of confidence in my ability to shoot the ball by watching the ball get shot, seeing how the big the basket was because it always looked pretty small to me when I was down on the court. So I became a much better shooter in my time off by sort of absorbing that.”
Foster went down in the Ole Miss game, fully extending to dive for a pass and landing on his shoulder. He didn’t play again.Now Foster looks fully recouped from that injury, even as he wears a non-contact black jersey. His speed and agility is a welcome complement to the wide receiving unit and he’s another speedy option opposite Calvin Ridley.
In three games last season, Foster caught 10 passes for 116 yards and two touchdowns. Through three practices he’s returning to form.
“When I get a chance to see him run routes he looks normal to me,” tight end O.J. Howard said. “I don’t think his injury is bothering him at all, from what I can see. He knows the plays, so he’s looking smooth to me.”
Foster’s injury gave Ridley an opportunity for playing time last season and now it’s Foster who is working his way back into the rotation.
“(He’s) doing a good job, a really good job,” Saban said. “He’s out there practicing. We put him in a black shirt because he’s coming off an injury, but he’s done everything that everybody else is doing, running all the routes, learning. He’s playing with a lot more confidence and has got better knowledge of the position.
“I think in Robert Foster’s case, he learned a lot last year when he wasn’t playing in terms of what he needed to do to play winning football, and he’s played with a lot more confidence in these two practices in terms of knowing what to do and how to do it.”
Reach Aaron Suttles at aaron@tidesports.com or at 205-722-0229.