In April 2015, offensive tackle La’el Collins was days away from getting drafted in the first round. But then Baton Rouge police said they needed to question him about the m—er of his ex-girlfriend, Brittany Mills. He wasn’t a suspect and was never charged. And despite cooperating with the authorities, he still went undrafted. Just the questions around him were enough. Similar doubts are now surfacing for  Miami defensive end Rueben Bain Jr’s ahead of the NFL Draft.

At around 4 a.m. on March 17, 2024, Bain was driving a black Land Rover on I-95 in Miami when his vehicle rear-ended another car and slammed into concrete highway barriers. One passenger, 22-year-old Destiny Betts, was critically injured and hospitalized at the time. But she died on June 13, 2024, after nearly three months in a coma. Bain was cited for careless driving at the scene, and the charge was dismissed before Betts had passed away. No sobriety tests were administered on Bain at the time.

The story went public recently, and NFL Draft expert Tony Pauline, on Essentially Sports’ DraftCast episode 15, painted a grim picture for Bain.

“Teams, that’s not going to hurt Rueben Bain,” Pauline said. “If they somehow reopen or feel the pressure to reopen a criminal investigation into this accident, he’s toast. … An unknown will really hurt a draft prospect more than anything else.”

CBS Sports’ Jonathan Jones reported recently that most teams have been aware of the accident for months now and are satisfied with Bain’s account. But teams being comfortable with a player’s explanation and law enforcement officially closing the file are not the same thing. Meanwhile, many voices around the league have drawn a parallel to what happened with Laremy Tunsil in 2016.

Mississippi offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil was projected to be the first overall pick. But minutes before the draft kicked off, a video went viral on his social media where he was seen smoking mar****na. What kept teams away wasn’t the video itself; it was the fear that even more was coming. But what happened to La’el Collins seems to be the closest precedent for what’s happening with Rueben right now. 

Tony Pauline also flagged the University of Miami’s handling of the incident, noting that they “swept it all under the rug.” He also compared the situation with what happened to Rashee Rice at SMU. While Rice was at SMU, he reportedly believed former SMU basketball player Kendric Davis was seeing his girlfriend. Rice and some friends attended one of Davis’ games. Rice (or someone with him) reportedly fired shots into Davis’ empty car.

SMU never reported the incident to the authorities. Teams dug it up during the pre-draft process anyway. The Kansas City Chiefs still drafted Rice in the second round in 2023. But when Rice’s post-draft legal troubles piled up in 2024, that buried incident became part of the league’s conduct file. 

The legal question around Rueben Bain Jr. is what everyone is debating publicly. But Pauline has also been watching something else develop in private.

Quiet, but in the wrong way

The contrast with players who’ve been through similar situations is hard to ignore.

When the gas mask video surfaced on Laremy Tunsil’s Twitter minutes before the draft, Tunsil was blindsided. But he was still at the event, still visibly processing it in real time, sitting in the Green Room with agents around him. He addressed it at his post-draft presser, acknowledged the video was real, and tried to answer all the questions. It cost him 12 draft spots, but at least he got picked.

La’el Collins took an even more aggressive approach. When his name surfaced in the police investigation, his agents got on the phone with all the general managers. They organized a secure conference call with 20 teams (two GMs and a stack of security directors) to walk them through Collins’ account in real time. Collins was in tears, furious, and loud. That transparency wasn’t enough to save his draft stock, but it showed the teams that he had nothing to hide.

As for Rueben Bain Jr, he is doing neither. He hasn’t hired an agent, so nobody is working the phones to let the league hear his story. People training alongside him have been talking, and what they’re describing isn’t confidence.

“I was talking to people who are training with Rueben Bain, and they say he’s very distant,” Pauline said. “I don’t know whether that’s his personality. He’s a tough nut to crack. He hasn’t hired an agent. People have tried to talk to him, and he does his own thing.”

The silence isn’t automatically damning, though. Pauline also noted that this might just be Rueben’s way of managing the narratives around him. And it’s something he must have seen coming a mile away.

“He’s got this thing that’s kind of been hidden out of sight, but that’s obviously got a way on your mind,” Pauline added. “And then there’s the whole idea of just kind of waiting for it to be a public thing. I’m sure his agents probably alerted him, saying there’s a high possibility that this is going to get out before the draft.”

The trouble isn’t that Rueben Bain Jr. has gone quiet; it’s the timing of it all that’s worrisome. Collins was proactive the moment his name went public. Tunsil sat in front of cameras within hours. But Bain has known this was coming since at least January. The pre-draft process has been ticking without an agent, without a public statement, and without anyone working the room for him. For a draft prospect who needs teams to feel settled on a situation that isn’t officially resolved, that’s a problem Bain has to solve as soon as possible.