Houston Texans: Why Trust Arian Foster? | NFL Fantasy Football Rankings

At the end of Arian Foster’s junior season at the university of Tennessee one would have thought there was a place for this young running back at the NFL draft. In 2007, Foster had over 1,100 yards rushing and 14 total touchdowns.

Unfortunately, for Foster, he decided to come back to Tennessee and play his senior year for the Volunteers. As many college football fans know Foster and Tennessee suffered a horrible season in 2008 and that helped lead to Foster producing very weak numbers in his final college year.

Getting In The Hard Way

After the 2009 NFL draft Foster was an undrafted free agent that signed with the Houston Texans. Singing with this team made some sense as the Texans were in the market for a bigger running back (Foster is 6’1, 215) to help run with Steve Slaton in their backfield.

While their was a need in the Texans backfield for a runner like Foster, he would have to wait behind veteran Chris Brown who was already filling this role on the team.

For most of this season Foster has participated on the Texans’ practice squad but was officially activated to the team November 17th.

While Foster did make an appearance on the team in November, it wouldn’t be until last week (after the team placed Slaton on injured reserve) that Foster would actually get a chance to play in his first NFL game.

The early returns for Foster weren’t promising as he ran the football 13 times for only 34 yards (2.6 yards per carry), but he did have an impressive four catches for 54 yards in the passing game.

A Chance To Help Fantasy Football Owners

Early this week, Texans head coach Gary Kubiak told the press that he was hoping to feature Foster as the Texans starting tailback this week against the Rams. Assuming that Foster would actually get a chance for major work against the Rams pathetic defense would make this running back a major waiver wire pickup as we are now in the fantasy football playoffs.

Unfortunately, fantasy owners are stuck with a very tough decision in regards to Foster as he does have a great matchup but coach Kubiak has flip flopped on runners all year.

One moment Kubiak love’s a certain runner on this team and the very next moment, he is grabbing that player by the collar and throwing them in the dog house.

This is not the type of consistency (or inconsistency) fantasy owners like, and it’s the type of decision making that makes most fantasy players avoid a certain team all together.

Sure enough, even this very week, coach Kubiak has come out and told the press after a practice that Foster has, “a long way to go.”

With heavy questions about Foster’s true amount of work fantasy owners are now left to question if they should trust this young talent for this week or should they cut bait and run?

Fantasy Strategy for Using Arian Foster

Right now I believe Foster is worth having on your fantasy roster. Even if you decide not to use him, it doesn’t hurt to stash him away from anyone you may be playing in the playoffs this week or in week’s to come.

As far as using Foster this week I would only suggest you start him (as a flex option) if you don’t have runners that have been producing for you.

In that situation, it wouldn’t hurt to roll the dice on a running back that is playing against one of the worst run defenses in all of football.

The Texans aren’t a playoff team, but as we saw last week they are good enough to roll it up on a very bad football team. This means that Foster should get plenty of work in the second half of this ball game.

NFL Fantasy Football Player Rankings writer Sean E. Douglas: fantasy-info.com