A projected first round pick might not get drafted at all now

Tony Raoux / Associated Press

Offense lineman La'el Collins out of LSU is slipping, well more like plummeting down draft boards across the NFL.

Collins pregnant ex-girlfriend Brittany Mills was murdered Friday night and police want to question him. While police maintain that he isn't a suspect in the murder, they want to talk to him about the paternity of the child who was born shortly after Mills death.

USA Today

We're not calling Mr. Collins a suspect, but we want to interview him because he had a relationship with Brittany Mills," Baton Rouge Police public information officer Jonny Dunnam told Gannett Louisiana on Tuesday. "We always try to contact as many people as we can who knew a victim for any information they may have and so that we can rule them out as possible suspects

But this meeting with police isn't set to take place until after the Draft, which makes NFL teams uneasy due to the fact they won't have any closure on the incident. While police maintain that he is a suspect now, teams have no idea if that could change. With the added scrutiny of teams that have players get in trouble with the law, no team would be willing to voluntarily take that on.

ProFootball Talk

Collins’s attorney said that he was “nowhere around” Brittany Mills at the time of her murder, but his pro career may be on hold until there’s some more certainty on where Collins fits into the investigation. There has been increasing talk in league circles that Collins neither draftable nor employable until/unless he is fully exonerated of any wrongdoing in the matter by law enforcement.

Schefter on Mike & Mike said there are multiple teams who believe La'El Collins won't be drafted.

— Evan Silva (@evansilva) April 30, 2015

If Collins did in fact have nothing to do with Mill's death, then this is the worst possible timing of this to happen. It will take a player that was almost certainly going to be a high draft pick and turn him to an undrafted free agent. With his earnings potential to be severely effected. Sure, some team might take a flier on him in the later rounds but that is, at this point, highly unlikely.

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