On at least two previous occasions before Aug. 1, D’Onta Foreman had begun to believe he’d carried a football for the final time.
He’d been injured, released and benched since entering the league, and had long been willing to call his NFL journey a wild ride — and occasionally willing to call it a career. Foreman maintained business interests away from football, and though he was generally just a phone call away from being more directly involved in those, he’d always chosen to instead answer calls from interested teams.
The phone has kept ringing. The ride has kept spinning.
In the span of a few August weeks, Foreman went from saying he was thankful to walk out of the hospital after suffering a training camp neck injury to being told by doctors he was cleared to play again. Then, he went from being released by the Cleveland Browns on Aug. 27 to being signed back two days later, then to playing just one snap in the season opener before starting at running back in Week 2 in Jacksonville. Foreman served as the opener and closer, rushing 14 times for 42 yards as the Browns secured their first win of the season.
After finding himself outside of the rotation in Week 1, Foreman said he was “itching” to get some action in Jacksonville.
“Of course I wanted to play, so I knew I just had to come to work and earn it,” Foreman said. “I feel like I had a good week of practice. Every day, you have to show up and prove it. I’ve been there before.”
The Browns are Foreman’s fourth team in the past four seasons. As a rookie with the Houston Texans in 2017, Foreman took off on a 34-yard touchdown run to seal a win over the Arizona Cardinals but suffered a torn Achilles tendon near the end of the play. Since then, he’s been on the move — on the tryout circuit, practice squads, at the front of a rotation some weeks and on the inactive list for others.
He’s also been to one of his lowest points. In October 2021, Foreman was at his Houston home waiting for an NFL team to contact him with a job opportunity when he got another type of call. His father, Darreck, had been killed when his Freightliner overturned on an Oklahoma highway.
It was the second time in five years that Foreman had experienced the loss of a close family member. During his final college season at the University of Texas, his son, D’Onta Jr., was born four months prematurely and died seven weeks later of an intestinal infection.
“Losing my son, that was the hardest thing I’d ever gone through,” Foreman said. “When I lost my dad, I was already going through a tough part of my life. I had gone from being on a high and being in the NFL to realizing I needed a change. I hit a wall and I didn’t know if I’d play football again. I started going through depression … having regrets. I went from being in Houston where I wanted to play and thinking I had it all to not being sure I was gonna play, then losing my dad. I had to change, and change is tough. But I had to be tough.
“I’ve grown from my adversities. I’ve been humbled. When you’re young, you might not appreciate all you have until it’s all taken away from you. So what happens when you get to that point? I’ve just been thankful, man. I’ve tried to show back up and be grateful and just work every day, every week. I had to (rely) on my willpower and my family. I feel like everybody in my family’s the same way. We’re strong-minded people, and whatever we put our mind to, we don’t stop until we get the job done.”
A tattoo stretches across Foreman’s chest. It reads, “Family Over Everything.”
A Texas high school legend who ran for over 4,300 yards and 61 touchdowns at Texas City High, Foreman went on to star at the University of Texas. In 2016, he won the Doak Walker Award as the nation’s top running back and joined Ricky Williams as the only Longhorn running backs to post a 2,000-yard rushing season. He had a 341-yard game versus Texas Tech in 2016, then ran for 167 the next game against West Virginia — a game that was played the week after his son’s death.
Foreman, who was drafted by the Texans in the third round in 2017, missed most of his second NFL season because of the Achilles injury he suffered as a rookie. He was waived by the Texans during training camp in 2019 and claimed by the Indianapolis Colts. But just three weeks later he suffered a season-ending torn triceps. His next chance came late in the 2020 season when he signed to Tennessee’s practice squad before getting called up to finish the season as Derrick Henry’s backup for a Titans team that made the playoffs.
He signed with Atlanta before the 2021 season but was cut at the end of training camp, then cut again after a brief stint on the practice squad. He got multiple tryouts in the weeks after his father’s death, then returned to Tennessee after Henry suffered an injury. In nine games and three starts, Foreman scored his first three rushing touchdowns since his rookie season.
Though he spent some time after the 2021 season mourning his father and pondering retirement, he played his first full season in 2022 in Carolina, where he averaged a career-best 4.5 yards per carry and became the team’s feature back after the rebuilding Panthers traded Christian McCaffrey to the San Francisco 49ers.
Foreman spent 2023 with the Chicago Bears, where he found some success in spot duty but wasn’t used much in the back half of the season. The Browns called in March because they needed a power-type runner with Nick Chubb rehabbing from knee surgery and uncertainty across the running backs group. Foreman’s initial deal only included $350,000 in guarantees, but it provided the opportunity to continue his career.
“Highs and lows, for sure, but to talk about playing eight seasons in the NFL means it’s definitely been a success,” Foreman said. “A lot of people don’t get to this point or even get near it. It’s a blessing, you know? I’ve had so many experiences. Of course I wish things were different in some situations. Some things were my fault. Some injuries, some stuff … it’s football. You don’t get to pick your path.”
Foreman never left Cleveland when the Browns released him in late August. He was not subject to waivers and became a free agent. Though he didn’t want to talk in detail about his latest temporary work interruption, he said he planned not only to rejoin the Browns but also to contribute this season.
“Like everything else, it’s a process,” he said. “I figured out that I would be back.”
Though Foreman took a blow to the head during a special teams drill Aug. 1 at a camp practice at the Greenbrier in West Virginia and was down for several minutes, he said he remembers everything. After telling the team’s medical staff he felt a sharp pain in his spinal area, he was immobilized and loaded into an ambulance. But because of the Greenbrier’s remote and mountainous location, medical officials decided it would be best if Foreman was helicoptered to a Roanoke, Va., hospital for further examination.
Foreman was on a backboard in the helicopter, but he was still in his pads. Team officials were able to contact Foreman’s family in Texas and inform them that though the medical staff believed he was OK, he needed to undergo several scans and an MRI. That left the family following on social media until hours later when Foreman was able to talk to doctors and eventually return to his phone. By late afternoon, Foreman was discharged.
“Sore as hell,” he said. “Feeling tight, not feeling great, but definitely grateful.”
Once Foreman was able to speak to his mother, what he really wanted was a nap. He got one while a Browns official drove him back to the Greenbrier, where he was ordered to wear a neck brace as a precaution but was told he probably had avoided major injury. He said teammates present and past continued to check on him in the days that followed, and despite some soreness and general fatigue, he was “feeling like myself again” within a few days.
More imaging and a follow-up doctor’s visit brought good news: Foreman did not have a concussion, and he was told that he faced a low risk of significant further injury to his neck if he returned to playing football. Within five days of the injury, he was going through individual workouts on the practice field. By the second week of the preseason, he was back in pads.
“I’m thankful to just be here, be alive, be able to be myself,” he said. “And like I say, things happen so fast in life. You’ve just got to be thankful for every moment, every day, every situation you get. You’ve got to be thankful for it and just try to do the best things you can while you’re here.”
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After last week’s win, Foreman said it felt good to run the ball again and “impose my will” on would-be tacklers. He said he would apologize to his coaches and teammates for the offensive face mask flag he picked up on a late fourth-quarter possession, but he called it a penalty of aggression in his efforts to seal the game.
“You have to live with that one,” he said.
There’s another game this week. Foreman is still living for his next carry.
“I’ve gone from team to team and place to place and ever since (the Achilles injury), it’s like I’ve been trying to fight back uphill,” he said. “I made it back up the hill. But even once you get up the hill, you might get stuck on a rock and roll down a little bit. You’ve gotta go back up. So that’s kind of my life, but I don’t take (this) for granted, man. Not everybody is built for this, but I am.”
(Top photo: Gary McCullough / Associated Press)
