Arian Foster ahead of schedule in recovery from groin surgery

Houston Texans running back Arian Foster may be ready to return sooner than many anticipated from groin surgery.

Houston Texans running back Arian Foster has a long history of spending time on the weekly injury report. Having played in all 16 games just twice during his six-year NFL career, Foster has dealt with a number of different maladies over the years.

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While those injuries have included surgeries to his back, it is fair to say that Foster may have had the most heartbreaking of injuries during this year’s training camp, when he suffered a groin injury during the team’s first padded workout. That resulted in a surgery performed on August 7th.

While the Texans played with the idea of placing Foster on short-term injured reserve, which would have held him out until Week 8, the team ultimately decided not to do so. Maybe they had a piece of inside information, but it appears they had a very good reason; Foster is currently ahead of schedule on his recovery.

Speaking with the media on Friday, Foster told the collected mass that he was in fact progressing faster than anticipated and was feeling better nearly daily.

"We're ahead of schedule."-RB Arian Foster, recovering from groin injury. Said progressing well.
— Drew Dougherty (@DoughertyDrew) September 10, 2015

While Foster was quick to say that he was feeling better and was ahead of schedule, he also tempered expectations a bit, noting that he wouldn’t return until he was 100%.

Arian Foster: 'I need to feel like I'm 100 percent as close to 100 percent' when asked what he needs to do to play in a game.
— Aaron Wilson (@AaronWilson_NFL) September 10, 2015

That likely means the team won’t back off the original two to three month time table originally set for the running back. They’ll want to see significant progress in his health before committing to anything sooner than that. Still, the decision not to put him on short-term injured reserve likely tells us more than the team is willing to right now.

For now the Texans will remain without Foster, who rushed for 1,246 yards and collected another 327 in the air during the 2014 season despite missing three games. They’ll hand the ball to Alfred Blue to start the season. Blue tallied 528 yards on 169 carries for two touchdowns and a pedestrian 3.1 yards per attempt. That included a 36-carry, 156 yard explosion against the Cleveland Browns on November 16th.

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