Three players on the Dolphins were teammates of La’el Collins at LSU, and they’re being pressed into service to try to recruit him to come to Miami.
Collins, a first-round talent who went undrafted after police said they wanted to question him in connection with the death of his ex-girlfriend, will be the most sought-after undrafted free agent in history if he is exonerated of the crime. Police have said he is not a suspect.
For the Dolphins, the effort to bring Collins into the fold has taken on the feel of a college recruiting visit. According to FOX 8 in New Orleans, not only is Dolphins coach Joe Philbin traveling to see Collins, but so are former LSU teammates Jarvis Landry, Anthony Johnson and Kelvin Sheppard.
NFL teams are limited in the financial offers they can make to undrafted rookies, which means there’s no way for Collins to make the kind of money on his rookie contract that he would have made as a first-round pick. But several teams are expected to offer Collins as much as the Collective Bargaining Agreement allows them to offer undrafted rookies, and so Collins will have multiple contracts to choose from, assuming he is exonerated.
As he chooses among those multiple offers, it may be a simple matter of Collins wanting to go to the team that feels the most like home. And the Dolphins are trying to make him feel like he’ll be comfortable in Miami.