Arian Foster won’t be a salary-cap casualty

When Houston Texans running back Arian Foster went out for the season with a torn Achilles, many thought that was the end for him with the Texans. He’s going to the final year of a contract that’s set to pay him $6.5 million and he will reach the age of 30, a fossil in running back years, at the start of next season.

If the Texans do cut Foster, they’ll save $4.2 million while accruing $2.3 million in dead money. But the Texans have plenty of salary-cap space and need only to add a quarterback that they’ll get in the draft. Texans general manager Rick Smith was asked if Foster would be on the roster at his current salary at the NFL Scouting Combine Friday.

And Smith like Fosters’ salary would have nothing to do with it, telling NFL Network, “As it relates to all the free agent conversations, I’m never really going to tell you one way or the other what we are doing, but I will tell you this: his salary is not a reason why we would cut Arian.

“I met with Arian a couple weeks ago, he’s doing well. One of the things that I was so disappointed for him for last year is because he worked, he probably had his best offseason last year and to see the injuries occur last year was disappointing primarily because I knew how hard he had worked.

“He’s right back at that, he’s got the right mindset. He came in and talked to me a couple weeks ago to make sure that we knew that. And I believe him. He’ll bounce back. He’ll be fine.”

All that sounds great but Foster played just four games in 2015 and hasn’t played in 16 games since 2012. Perhaps his salary won’t get him cut and what we’ll see if the aging running back can stay healty and effective. If he can’t, perhaps that will give the Texans cause to cut him at any time.