Thank you so much for your response and I guess you are right I had similar things in mind for him . Not sure if he wants advice but we talk a lot about it and he just seemed a bit lost and open to most ideas I gave him . <| sep |> Harbourtown hotel , it ' s in Docklands so don ' t need to worry about a crowd or loud music and can comfortably sit 15 or more and they ' ve got a decent menu and cool cocktails if I remember correctly <| sep |> Haha that ' s genius <| sep |> Concise and accurate . rhistory could do with more responses like yours . <| sep |> For the situation you mentioned , first season in the NFL makes more sense than first drafteligible season . Consider Jarryd Hayne , who technically entered the draft in 2009 3 years out of high school but didn ' t sign an NFL contract until 2015 . You ' d call him a rookie in 2015 , not a 7 year veteran , because it ' s his first year in the NFL . The distinction is not as clear for a player who , for example , spends only 2 games on a 53 man roster before being waived and remaining unemployed the rest of the season . From a stats perspective he ' s clearly no longer a rookie the following season . From a CBA perspective , however , he has earned neither an accrued season nor a credited season . Thus he is still 4 credited seasons from becoming an unrestricted FA , and the minimum salary he can be signed for is still the rookie minimum . I ' m still not sure where exactly you ' d draw the line . Is a player who makes it until the final preseason cutdown and ends up on a practice squad all year a rookie the next year ?