Or, at least he wasn't the first player to do so. He was the first ND player, though.
There were 38 underclassmen who declared for the draft, and about half of them didn't get drafted.
The article linked below has the first handful of underclassmen who had declared during that 1st year that juniors were allowed to enter the draft, and he wasn't in that list. He made that decision some time in March.
Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1990/02/17/nfl-allows-college-juniors-to-enter-draft/04b4c486-e177-40b0-b1e9-866fde2cbb53/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.734df3ceda44
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