Patriots WR Hawkins retires, pledges brain to research
Collins signs extension
FOXBOROUGH, Massachusetts, July 26, (Agencies): Receiver Andrew Hawkins says he is retiring from the NFL and donating his brain to research.
The six-year NFL veteran signed with the New England Patriots in May as a free agent. But he said in a video on uninterrupted.com that his body isn’t responding as he prepared for training camp.
The Concussion Legacy Foundation says Hawkins has pledged his brain for research into chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. The degenerative disease is known to cause cognitive and behavioral problems in athletes, members of the military and others who sustained repeated head trauma.
The 31-year-old undrafted free agent out of Toledo played three seasons each with the Bengals and Browns. In 2014 he had career highs of 63 catches and 824 yards. He also helped the Montreal Alouettes win back-to-back Grey Cup championships in the Canadian Football League.
Hawkins
Dallas Cowboys offensive lineman La’el Collins has signed a two-year contract extension worth up to $17.4 million, earning a payday that eluded him when a police investigation kept him from getting drafted two years ago. Collins, who will get $9.5 million in guaranteed money, was considered a first-round talent out of LSU in 2015 but wasn’t selected after his name surfaced in the probe of a woman’s death just before the NFL draft. He was soon cleared, and chose the Cowboys in free agency on a fully guaranteed $1.5 million, three-year deal.
The agreement Tuesday came a day before Collins’ 24th birthday, and he said the contract “means a lot to me and my family in so many ways.”
Collins is expected to replace the retiring Doug Free at right tackle after starting 14 of 15 games at left guard in his first two seasons. He missed the last 13 games last season with a toe injury.
A shoplifting charge that prompted the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys to cut receiver Lucky Whitehead was a case of mistaken identity, police in Virginia said Tuesday.
“Upon reviewing the June 22, 2017 arrest of an individual named ‘Rodney Darnell Whitehead, Jr’, the police department is confident that the man charged with petit larceny, and who is subsequently being sought on an active warrant for failure to appear in court, is not Lucky Whitehead of the Dallas Cowboys,” Prince William County Police Sergeant Jonathan Perok said in a statement. The department said it regretted the impact its errors had caused Whitehead and his family.
The Cowboys, who have seen a string of players arrested since the end of last season, wasted little time in saying Monday they would release Whitehead, a Virginia native, after reports that he was arrested for shoplifting on June 22 and had failed to appear for a scheduled court date earlier this month.
Whitehead insisted it was a case of mistaken identity, and his agent produced an airplane ticket that showed Whitehead was still in Dallas at the time of the alleged theft.
The police said the man who was arrested wasn’t carrying identification, but gave his personal information verbally to officers.
Officers checked his information through the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles database and used the photo on file to compare to the man they had in custody.
“... Officers acted in good faith that, at the time, the man in custody was the same man matching the information provided. At this point, the police department is also confident in confirming that Mr Whitehead’s identity was falsely provided to police during the investigation,” the police statement said.