New Orleans Saints tight end Foster Moreau sat down with ESPN’s Adam Schefter to look back on a rollercoaster of emotions during the last few months, and how his relationship with the Saints and quarterback Derek Carr helped seal the deal on his free agent contract with his hometown team.
The way Moreau tells it, he’s “been with the Saints since Aaron Brooks.” He’s born and raised in New Orleans, having played high school football at John Ryan Stadium just ten minutes away from the Caesars Superdome in Mid-City before continuing his athletic career in Baton Rouge with the LSU Tigers. His relationship with the team and its decision-makers played a major role in getting this done.
Moreau says that Loomis called his agent the day after he received his diagnosis. We’ll let him tell it: “That Saturday was the physical. That Sunday, Mickey calls my agent, Joe Linta. He says, ‘Look, we still value Foster as a person, and we value him even more as a player. We would absolutely love to sign him to whatever deal we can, whatever you guys feel comfortable (with), and whenever he’s ready to play, we’re excited to have him regardless. We’re going to keep him here, we’re going to keep him at home.’ And for me, that just spoke volumes.”
His specific cancer is much more treatable than most. Moreau shared that he’s been diagnosed with Nodular lymphocyte-predominant Hodgkin lymphoma, or NLPHL, which is a non-aggressive cancer detected in 3 to 5% of patients. And it can be managed by infrequent medicine doses, not rigorous rounds of radiation or chemotherapy.
“My schedule was looking like this,” Moreau reflected, “I finished (treatment) Tuesday. I signed Wednesday, and Thursday I was out running routes with my quarterback, and my receivers, and my running backs at the Saints’ practice facility at 7:30 in the morning.”
Now he’s on track to practice with his teammates at organized team activities later in May and June, though Moreau’s doctors are advising him on how to best progress and ramp up his activity level. That he’s able to treat his cancer so well is remarkable, and it’s not a blessing he’s taking lightly.
And that last part means a lot — Moreau says that Carr has been one of his closest friends and mentors in the NFL. He recalled one meeting during his rookie year in which Carr addressed a room full of first-year players: “Derek told all of us, ‘You only get this chance once, please make it count, and don’t make it count for anyone other than you.’ It was so powerful for me. I remember where he was sitting. I remember how he said it. Just a special guy and a special leader. I’ll always be, I don’t know if indebted is the right word, but I’ll have a massive amount of reverence for especially the man, but obviously the player.”
As Loomis himself pointed out, the Saints valued Moreau so highly because they believe he’s a very good football player. But all of these human connections matter. Having those bonds and relationships to lean on and keep people together when adversity strikes is vital. Now that he’s putting this medical scare behind him, any adversity Moreau sees on the football field might pale in comparison.
