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Saban says Robert Foster could be better from sitting most of last year
Aaron Suttles | Beat Writer
There was a time when Nick Saban wasnāt a good shooter.
By his own admission, Saban, whose gameās of pick-up basketball inside Coleman Coliseum are the stuff of legend, couldāt consistently make a jump shot in high school.
What does any of this have to do with the University of Alabamaās 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.
āI think sometimes you can learn a lot when you donāt play,ā Saban said. āSome people think that you have to get a lot of reps to really learn, but sometimesā¦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.
āWe 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 couldnāt 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.
āSo 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.ā
Foster went down in the Ole Miss game, fully extending to dive for a pass and landing on his shoulder. He didnāt 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 heās another speedy option opposite Calvin Ridley.
In three games last season, Foster caught 10 passes for 116 yards and two touchdowns. Through three practices heās returning to form.
āWhen I get a chance to see him run routes he looks normal to me,ā tight end O.J. Howard said. āI donāt think his injury is bothering him at all, from what I can see. He knows the plays, so heās looking smooth to me.ā
Fosterās injury gave Ridley an opportunity for playing time last season and now itās Foster who is working his way back into the rotation.
ā(Heās) doing a good job, a really good job,ā Saban said. āHeās out there practicing. We put him in a black shirt because heās coming off an injury, but heās done everything that everybody else is doing, running all the routes, learning. Heās playing with a lot more confidence and has got better knowledge of the position.
āI think in Robert Fosterās case, he learned a lot last year when he wasnāt playing in terms of what he needed to do to play winning football, and heās played with a lot more confidence in these two practices in terms of knowing what to do and how to do it.ā
Aaron Suttles | Beat Writer
There was a time when Nick Saban wasnāt a good shooter.
By his own admission, Saban, whose gameās of pick-up basketball inside Coleman Coliseum are the stuff of legend, couldāt consistently make a jump shot in high school.
What does any of this have to do with the University of Alabamaās 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.
āI think sometimes you can learn a lot when you donāt play,ā Saban said. āSome people think that you have to get a lot of reps to really learn, but sometimesā¦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.
āWe 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 couldnāt 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.
āSo 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.ā
Foster went down in the Ole Miss game, fully extending to dive for a pass and landing on his shoulder. He didnāt 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 heās another speedy option opposite Calvin Ridley.
In three games last season, Foster caught 10 passes for 116 yards and two touchdowns. Through three practices heās returning to form.
āWhen I get a chance to see him run routes he looks normal to me,ā tight end O.J. Howard said. āI donāt think his injury is bothering him at all, from what I can see. He knows the plays, so heās looking smooth to me.ā
Fosterās injury gave Ridley an opportunity for playing time last season and now itās Foster who is working his way back into the rotation.
ā(Heās) doing a good job, a really good job,ā Saban said. āHeās out there practicing. We put him in a black shirt because heās coming off an injury, but heās done everything that everybody else is doing, running all the routes, learning. Heās playing with a lot more confidence and has got better knowledge of the position.
āI think in Robert Fosterās case, he learned a lot last year when he wasnāt playing in terms of what he needed to do to play winning football, and heās played with a lot more confidence in these two practices in terms of knowing what to do and how to do it.ā
