La’el Collins is going from stars to stripes.
Word came out of Dallas on Thursday that the Cowboys would be releasing the veteran right tackle, and within a matter of hours, Collins was on a plane to Cincinnati. After a weekend of heavy recruiting, he signed a new contract on Sunday to stay.
Collins inked a three-year deal, binding him to the Bengals through the 2024 season. He will be part of a major rebuild of the Cincinnati offensive line, the unit that will be charged with keeping quarterback Joe Burrow upright following a season in which he was sacked 70 times, the third-most for any passer in league history.
The 28-year-old and two other newly-signed linemen were guests at Burrow’s house on Friday night. By Sunday, Burrow was texting Collins to ask about the status of the team’s contract offer.
Collins’s reply? “Your new bodyguard is in town, nobody’s touching you.”
It was a rather swift fall from grace in Dallas, where Collins had been a free agent signing of the team following the 2015 draft. Once pegged as a first-round selection out of LSU that year, Collins went unselected after his name surfaced during an investigation into the shooting death of a woman with whom he had had a relationship.
Collins was soon cleared of any involvement in the case, but he missed the draft. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones swooped in to host Collins for a five-star dinner at his palatial home. There, he met with head coach Jason Garrett, the Cowboys offensive line, quarterback Tony Romo, and tight end Jason Witten, who helped convince him to sign with Dallas.
Collins went on to start 11 games as a rookie. His second season was cut short after three contests due to a toe injury. He started each game during the 2017 and 2018 seasons, and earned a five-year contract extension prior to the 2019 campaign. He played in 15 games that year, but then an offseason hip issue put him on injured reserve for all of 2020.
Collins showed up to 2021 training camp noticeably leaner and ready to reclaim his place among the league’s most dominant linemen. But he was suspended by the NFL just after opening night for violating the league’s substance abuse policy for reportedly missing tests. He appealed his five-game sentence, only to face new allegations that he had tried to bribe the testing officer.
His five-game punishment stuck, and by the time Collins was eligible to return, second-year man Terence Steele had played well enough in his right tackle spot that the Cowboys kept him there. Collins was reinstated as a backup, and returned to his usual spot only when other absences forced Steele to shuffle further down the Dallas front five.
With Collins’s large salary cap hit and 21 of the team’s last 34 games missed- and given Steele’s rise in play- the Cowboys determined that the veteran would not be part of their future plans.
But Collins will have to be part of their defensive game plan. The Bengals are scheduled to visit AT&T Stadium to face the Cowboys during the upcoming 2022 season.
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