Update: Hill has tweeted he received erroneous information from Collins and has now confirmed the player will in fact be a RFA in 2017. The rest of the article remains intact below.

Standard operating procedure for undrafted free agents is they are locked in on a three-year deal and then the club who signed them has the option to place a tender on them. This is known as restricted free agency and is a part of the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiated between the NFL and the Player’s Association during the lockout of 2011. Players with less than four accrued seasons are all considered RFAs.

This may not apply to offensive lineman La’El Collins of the Dallas Cowboys, as Clarence Hill, Jr. of the Ft. Worth Star Telegram is reporting Collins will be allowed to hit unrestricted free agency following the 2017 season, just his third in the NFL.

La'el Collins will be an ufa after the season. Its a deal he made with Cowboys when they signed him. A good yr at RT could = more $$$ — Clarence Hill Jr (@clarencehilljr) May 8, 2017

It should be noted Hill is the only member of Cowboys media making this claim at the moment. He seems to be getting this information directly from the player himself, or at least the player’s representative.

Restricted free agency is outlined in the 2011 CBA. Article 9 covers Veteran Free Agency and Section 2 handles restricted free agency. Subsection (b) comes into play with the apparent agreement:

The Cowboys may have agreed with Collins representatives that they will not extend the Qualifying Offer. Or did they?

I'm told a team CANNOT offer that. https://t.co/3X7u3fek2p — mike fisher ✭ (@fishsports) May 8, 2017

RFA has been around much longer and in other sports, but the mechanism in football is as follows. After three years of service, the team is allowed to place one of three levels of tender, or the qualifying offer. The tenders have different one-year salary amounts associated with them. If the player chooses to look for employment elsewhere, signing an offer sheet with another club, the original club will have five days to match the offer.

If they decline, the original club would receiver draft pick compensation from the acquiring club, based on the level of tender they placed on the player. Each of the three tender amounts has a level of draft pick compensation associated with it. There’s the original round tender, which for a UDFA is simply a right of refusal on the offer sheet. There is also a second-round tender and a first-round tender. For 2018, the first-round tender will likely come in slightly higher than the $4 million threshold.

For the Cowboys and La’El Collins, it appears the RFA process might not matter. Clubs often put clauses into veteran player’s contracts that they will not place things such as the franchise or transition tag tenders on the player following the end of the deal. It appears due to the extenuating circumstances of how Collins went undrafted, Hill believes an agreement was made between the two parties.

That was in deal https://t.co/FqSZbniBVZ — Clarence Hill Jr (@clarencehilljr) May 8, 2017

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