Bill O'Brien made it very clear early on that he doesn't want to talk injuries. Part of the new media guidelines was to tell media not to ask about guys who are not playing that day. (This rule hasn't really been followed to the letter). Instead of speculating why O'Brien is this way, I asked him. This was his response:





“My main philosophy on that is I really don’t want to talk about the injury until I know what it is. A lot of times when I come off the field, people will ask me about the injury but I haven’t even spoken to Kap (head athletic trainer Geoff Kaplan) or anybody about that injury. As we move forward, I’ll follow the rules of the National Football League and when the injury reports are supposed to come out, I’ll put them out. I think the thing about injuries, to me, it’s very personal to that player. To come in here and just start right away talking about injuries, without knowing too much about it, is probably the wrong thing to do as it relates to the players. I always try to do what’s best for the player.”







NFL rules barely require any information. Probabilities basically during regular season game week. So any fantasy football folks looking to get real information about the Texans injury situation will likely get close to nothing.





As for Foster, ever since he was in college, he has enjoyed doing media, but only by his own terms. That is, if he has something to promote, or if he wants to talk to a specific media member, or if there is something particular he wants to say. He uses his Twitter to say what he thinks on things, and rarely wants to talk football stuff, though he very much cares about football. I think as to the media as a whole he (very rightly) has distrust for them, though I believe the way he shows that distrust is counterproductive.





As for this year in particular, it is more surprising when you get a good quote in camp. D.J. Swearinger likely says the most stuff.





Very early on, back in rookie minicamp, media members noticed that it was like pulling teeth to get the players to talk about themselves or their teammates or their past or anything other than some variation of, "Working hard every day, trying to be the best teammate I can be." A few players, including Arian, would only parrot that phrase in response to just about everything.





When we asked O'Brien about the reluctance of the rookies to talk about themselves, it was foreshadowing what was going to happen for the rest of the team:







"It’s a team sport. To me, it’s the greatest team sport. It’s 11 guys trying to be on the same page and play as a team and understand their role on the team and how important the phrase is ‘the more you can do.’ Can I be a left guard? Can I play some tackle? Can I be a first and second down running back and contribute on the punt team. When you start seeing guys really believe in those things, then you have the makings of a decent team and that’s what we talk about all the time with our veterans that have been here and that’s what we’ve talked about in the last couple of meetings with the rookies.”







So, that's the message. Both with injuries and with media comments, if it isn't something that helps in winning, they don't want to share it.