PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan)- "You gotta know when."
"You know you can be one of those guys that continues to dive in, dive in, dive in and one of the things that I never wanted to do was one, not be smart about my situation and position I was in and the other one, just continue to I guess you could say run myself into the ground to where the production wouldn't be where I would it to be.
I had conversations with the Steelers, the front office and coach Tomlin. If for anything, I'll bow out instead of having to go the other route because my mentality the whole time after being here for so long was just simply, it was Pittsburgh or nowhere else for me. Especially this late in my career. To me it was, hey, know when to say when."
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Remarkably, Foster came into the league as an undrafted rookie free agent and carved out an 11-year NFL career.
"I wanted to make a team. Make the Pittsburgh Steelers. After that, you have those mini goals you set for yourself moving foward. That was, 'well man if I make the team, I want to start. And I become a starter, I want to be long term starter.' Make a living for my family, make a career out of it when I saw how real it could be.
But I'll be honest with you, I didn't think it would be 11 years. It's really cool to look back on it now and it still hasn't really set in about what all has happened but you never really enjoy it while you're playing it."
Foster also appreciated the fact that he had such a great offense to work with under Ben Roethlisberger but said there is a sense of regret that they didn't win more and get to more Super Bowls with some of the elite offense they had over the years.
He has been blown away by the outpouring of congratulation and love by Steelers fans, and football fans in general, that he's received.
"It's really been an overflow of love and respect from our fans, fans of other fanbases, and I said it last night in a tweet and was like, 'man, you guys are really making this hard.' You know, I never did the Pro Bowl or anything like that and you don't look at it in a sense of like people respecting you because you don't have those awards or those accolades and that's okay.
I literally haven't seen anything negative or a response that's negative like, 'I'm glad you're retired' type of thing. It's really, really cool man and I'm very appreciative of it.