While the National Football League’s daily transactions report is long and soon will be longer as teams set their rosters for the regular season next week, the United Football League also has a robust transactions report as teams release players to sign with the NFL and prepare for contracts to run out on Saturday.
The UFL’s Houston Roughnecks waived six players on Monday, including former Alabama linebacker Reuben Foster.
Foster ended the UFL’s inaugural season two weeks early by being placed on injured reserve on May 24.
Foster was not released to sign with an NFL team. Those transactions appear on the UFL report under the heading: Contract terminated/Signing with NFL team.
Four players are designated that way on Monday’s UFL transactions report, including Birmingham Stallions linebacker Kyahva Tezino, who is signing with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The Stallions also announced on Monday the re-signing of two players from their 2024 UFL championship team – offensive tackle Darius Harper and safety T.J. Carter.
Tezino and Foster were teammates in 2023 with the USFL’s Pittsburgh Maulers, which did not survive the merger of the USFL and the XFL for the 2024 season.
Foster’s season with the Maulers ended a four-year gap in his football career, and he helped his new team reach the USFL Championship Game, where the Maulers lost to Birmingham 28-12 on July 1, 2023.
Foster joined the Roughnecks in the UFL dispersal draft, and he made 28 tackles and intercepted a pass for Houston.
Foster was the Class 6A Lineman of the Year and a Parade and Under Armour All-American at Auburn High School in 2012.
At Alabama, Foster started for the CFP national championship team in 2015 and earned unanimous All-American recognition and the Butkus Award as the nation’s best linebacker in 2016.
Foster joined the San Francisco 49ers as the 31st player picked in the NFL Draft on April 26, 2017. Evaluated by some as a top-10 prospect, Foster was available at the next-to-last selection of the first round after offseason shoulder surgery, an outburst against a hospital worker that got him sent home from the NFL Scouting Combine and a failed drug test at the combine due to a diluted sample.
Foster made the Pro Football Writers of America’s All-Rookie team in 2017, even though he missed six games because of injuries.
In the first two months of Foster’s first NFL offseason, he was arrested twice, and the league suspended Foster for the first two games of the 2018 season for violating the NFL’s substance-abuse and personal-conduct policies.
Another arrest on Nov. 25, 2018, prompted the 49ers to waive Foster, and Washington claimed him. But Foster didn’t play for Washington as he spent the final five games of the 2018 season on the Commissioner Exempt List while the NFL investigated his latest arrest.
The league restored Foster to Washington’s active roster on April 12, 2019.
Foster’s arrests included charges of second-degree possession of marijuana, felony domestic violence, forcefully attempting to prevent a victim from reporting a crime, possession of an assault weapon and first-degree domestic battery.
All of those charges were eventually dismissed except for the weapon possession, to which Foster pleaded no contest on June 6, 2018, and he received a fine and community service as punishment.
Foster’s NFL career hit a roadblock on May 20, 2019, when he tore the anterior cruciate ligament and lateral collateral ligament in his left knee during an offseason practice with the Washington Redskins.
After spending the 2019 season on Washington’s injured reserve, he returned to practice with the team on Aug. 9, 2020. But when Washington reduced its training-camp roster to the regular-season limit of 53 players less than one month later, Foster returned to injured reserve for another season-long stay.
Foster became an NFL free agent in March 2021 when his four-year rookie contract ended. He has not been on an NFL team’s roster since.
