I wanted the Hawks to draft him. I took some flack for it, too.
I think he was suspended his last year at LSU for weed (and several failed drug tests.) That's the "red flag". Gotta give him credit for getting it together an choosing his career over weed.
I just don't get why teams don't take calculated risks on certain players. Mathieu for one. La'el Collins last year draft is even worse. Should have taken him with a late round pick. That's just stupid to pass completely there. The agent outsmarted every NFL team, apparently, with their bluff.
Collins’s agents decided to let teams know that if they weren’t going to draft Collins in the second or third round, they shouldn’t bother. They threatened teams that if Collins was drafted any later, he would sit out the season and re-enter the 2016 draft. While NFL teams bought the threat, it was apparently a bluff:
“We can put it on the record now: We were never going back in the draft,” [agent Rick] Smith says of waiting for the 2016 draft. “If someone had drafted him, we would’ve had a long, long discussion about it, but at the end of the day you can’t go back in the draft. He could get injured, gain weight, or 10 great tackles could come out. Too many risks.”
http://deadspin.com/lael-collins-nearly ... 1704728354
There was only assumption of circumstantial evidence. It was looking likely he would be easily cleared of any suspicion. Could have had the starting LG with that pick. I don't buy any excuse that the Seahawks already had a PR headache with Clark. If anything, they could have served to deflect each other. Lots of people hate the Seahawks anyway, so I don't care what others think of our players. It's football.
Yeah, pehawk, this stuff doesn't sit well with me either.