Skins Wait Until Right Before Training Camp Starts To Cut Mason Foster

The Skins have burned so much goodwill that even when they do something relatively ordinary for a football team, it comes off as malicious. Alternatively, the Skins have burned so much goodwill because they’re able to turn ordinary behavior for a football team into something malicious.

Today Washington released linebacker Mason Foster, who was its leading tackler last season, although that fact is less impressive when the team sucks. The timing of the move is what rankled Foster’s agent, Blake Baratz, as he defended his client on Twitter. The Skins could’ve cut Foster weeks ago and give him time to try and catch on with another team, but they waited until the day before training camp started in Richmond.

The Skins might’ve treated their former team captain like this because at the end of last game’s slide, which saw the squad go from 6-3 to 6-7, Foster vented to a random person on Instagram and said, “Fuck this team and this fan base,” along with some cry-laughing emoji. At the time, head coach Jay Gruden and some of Foster’s teammates stuck up for him and understood his frustration, although D.J. Swearinger was jettisoned for his own honesty on Christmas Eve and Zach Brown had a sense he wasn’t coming back.

Even though linebacker Reuben Foster (no relation) tore his ACL in May, Washington supposedly found no need for Mason Foster. LB Jon Bostic has reportedly filled in competently, and the team might’ve been swayed to save $4 million toward the salary cap. Although the Skins could’ve come to this conclusion a while ago, do they deserve the benefit of the doubt here, given that around this time of year plenty of football organizations cut notable veterans in order to save some money? Haha, no, of course not. This team shouldn’t exist.