Fansided

Chargers wanted to draft La’el Collins

By Will Osgood

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The San Diego Chargers gave serious consideration to drafting LSU offensive La’el Collins but the rational approach won out. 

La’el Collins entered the week of the NFL draft as an almost unquestioned first-round pick. By the time the draft had ended, however, he was left without an NFL team to call his own. That is, of course, because he underwent the unfortunate (from any perspective) circumstance of having his name linked to a murder of a pregnant woman in Baton Rouge.

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It was reported that Collins was not thought to be a suspect in the murder of the 29-year-old woman who the Baton Rouge Police believed was an ex-girlfriend of Collins (to that end it should be noted that the infant who was eight months in Brittany Mills’ womb had initially survived but passed away as well).

The situation appears to be more complicated than initially thought, as Collins left Chicago–the site of this year’s NFL draft–to head back to Baton Rouge to meet with the police.

Because of those complications, NFL teams were quite wary of selecting him at all in the draft. Yet as a San Diego reporter, Michael Gelkahn of the U-T San Diego, notes, the Chargers, at least did their homework.

It’s not surprising that Telesco–the Chargers’ general manager–would do extensive background investigation on Collins. For one, the Chargers’ offensive line a year ago was not exemplary, but actually pretty bad. Second, the Chargers had only five picks in this draft, and frankly they did not make great use of them.

Telesco certainly would have desired to add Collins one way or the other, whether it was with a late-round pick or as an even bigger bargain by signing him as a priority free agent. To get a for-sure starter any time after the first-round, especially in this draft class, would have been an absolute steal.

Collins plans to sign with an NFL team as soon as he has his name cleared from any wrongdoing in the murder case of Brittany Mills, which he is quite resolute about. The odd thing, however, is that despite his resolute nature on the events, NFL franchises seem confused by the whole thing.

So while on the surface Collins sounds completely innocent, and a victim (as far as his draft stock is concerned) in this ordeal, there almost certainly is something more to this story which is yet to come out.

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