Tania Ganguli, ESPN Staff Writer 9y

Arian Foster and Gary Kubiak have mutual admiration

HOUSTON -- Before the first practice of 2009's organized team activities, then-Houston Texans coach Gary Kubiak gathered all the rookies together from first-round pick Brian Cushing down to the undrafted rookies hoping to make the team.

"He said, 'I don’t care if you’re undrafted or if you’re Brian. If you can play, you’re going to find a way to play in this league whether it’s here or somewhere else. You’ll get an opportunity, and it’s about what you do with the opportunity when you have it,'" running back Arian Foster remembers. "He held true to that word, because as soon as I got my opportunity, there was no bias involved."

This weekend Gary Kubiak will return to Houston as the Ravens' offensive coordinator. He'll return to a team that still has several players who credit Kubiak for having believed in them and given them a chance. Foster is one of those.

"He was my first and only NFL coach for five years, so he was all I knew about the NFL," Foster said. "I felt like he treated us very fairly. He was always up front with us, and I feel like he was a great offensive mind. I always felt like that. I excelled under his regime and under his offense. The way he used me brought a lot of success to this organization as well as personally. He changed my life for, you know, my life and my kid's life. There’s a lot of love on this end for Kub."

There is love back from Kubiak, too, who gave a shot to a player whose attitude and fumbling issues contributed to his not being drafted out of Tennessee.

"There was some things that were being said about this or that when he came out; he wasn't drafted for whatever reason, I don't know," Kubiak said in Baltimore this week. "We gave him an opportunity and Arian deserves the credit. He was on the practice squad. He's carrying helmets. He's on the low end of the totem pole. Before the year was out, he had played three games. At that time, you knew that this was the next guy. You have to give the credit to Arian. He had the ability, and I think he flipped the switch as a pro in the way he goes about handling himself and playing the game.

"We all see what he's become. I'm very proud of him."

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