Editor's note: All monetary figures come from spotrac.com.

Rookie Dallas Cowboys guard La'el Collins got a nice monetary boost by being one of the NFL's top 25 players in the league's performance-based pay system.

Cowboys rookie LG La'el Collins earned 14th-most in NFL in league's performance-based pay system for 2015 at $277,940, league announced. — Brandon George (@DMN_George) March 15, 2016

According to the NFL's official page, performance-based pay "compensates players for playing time based upon their salary levels." Collins appeared in 12 games and started 11 for the Cowboys during his rookie season.

His rookie salary was $435,000 with a $7,000 signing bonus. That means Collins' performance-based pay was more than half of his rookie base salary.

Collins was the second-highest paid guard in with the NFL's performance-based pay behind Philadelphia Eagle Matt Tobin who made $307,101.

To see a full list of players, click here.

After going undrafted, Collins, who was thought to have first-round talent, signed a three-year deal with the Cowboys.

To compare, three guards were taken in the first round of the draft. The first was Brandon Scherff, who signed a four-year, $21.4 million deal with the Washington Redskins. He made $3,857,388 during his rookie year. The final guard taken in the first round was Laken Tomlinson. He signed a four-year, $8.6 million deal with the Detroit Lions and made $1,554,589 in his rookie year.

SportsDay's Barry Horn detailed in an excellent feature story why Collins went from a projected first round pick to not being drafted at all.

Collins said he was sitting in the airport in Atlanta talking to his agent and waiting for an airplane to whisk them to the Chicago draft site when he first heard the words "it's about to hit."

By the time he got off the plane in Chicago he said he was "surrounded by chaos." The media had picked up the news about the murder.

"I had a feeling I never felt before," he said.

There was a dead 29-year-old woman, who had been shot and killed in Baton Rouge. She had been eight months pregnant. Her baby son, delivered alive, had died, too.

The Baton Rouge police wanted to talk to Collins, who once dated the dead woman.

NFL teams saw a giant red flag. They no longer wanted to risk a draft choice on La'el Collins.

On the first day of the draft, Collins was no longer in Chicago. He was back in Baton Rouge for a privately administered lie detector test. He passed.

But so did NFL teams. He was not drafted.

Collins met with police. He took a paternity test. He passed.

Less than a week after he had been bypassed in the draft, Collins was no longer linked to the murder. He remained a free man, free to sign with any NFL team of his choice.

To read more of Horn's profile, click here.