My suspicion is that Hill and the Board made the announcement they made in order to take the heat off the young fella. It is only a suspicion because I have no firm proof. Rumours are that someone at the Dogs has been talking to him (Khoury?), but the insane media attention on LM last week was insane, to an insane level, and the Bulldogs announcement took a lot of heat out of the situation.
I suspect that they had been talking with him, perhaps in some depth. There are two main issues that I can see; 1. What is he going to get paid (and if he comes a year early, what can the Dogs realistically fit under the cap), 2. Where does he play. We need a left centre, LM has indicated he wants FB.
Too much stuff to sit down and work out while the media insanity is going on. Either we legit are not interested in him now or in the future, or we have been trying to work out how to get him into Blue and White in the real world of contracts and egos, not the fake world of fans where everything should simply work the way random fans think it should.