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INDIANAPOLIS — With the broadest of smiles and friendliest of handshakes, Laiatu Latu remains committedly oblivious to why he’s one of the best stories at this combine — and maybe the most confounding.
Latu is not supposed to be playing football. After hurting his neck in a preseason workout three-and-a-half years ago, he had neck fusion surgery. The University of Washington medical staff refused to medically clear him and advised him, he said, to consider himself “retired.”
A year later, he asked the esteemed neck surgeon Dr. Robert Watkins to run him through every test he could and Watkins — who performed Peyton Manning’s neck fusion — said he could indeed clear him to return to a football field. A year later, Latu transferred to UCLA, and two monster seasons later, the All-American is the reigning winner of the Lombardi and Hendricks awards. And yet, he’s not the unequivocally most coveted pass rusher in this draft.
Because of that whole amorphous, indefinable risk thing.
“There’s risk for anyone playing football,” Latu said, with a shrug. “Really, there’s risk for anything in life.”
Latu is long, he’s rangy, he’s an incredibly polished technician and he ran a very strong 4.64 40 Thursday night. In talking to both personnel and coaches around Indianapolis, there is uniform agreement Latu has all the traits of an elite pass rusher. He is medically cleared to play football and he said teams this week haven’t actually asked too many questions about his neck.
And yet, one general manager who has spoken to Latu and who immediately called him “a great kid,” said there’s medically cleared and there’s every individual team’s own medical staff’s risk assessment. And the risk, in this case, being less about something catastrophic happening (which Latu again said could happen to anyone), and more about durability.
Asking their doctors to guess at a player’s longevity is standard for general…
Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/2024-nfl-combine-uclas-laiatu-latu-showing-hes-worth-the-risk-after-overcoming-career-threatening-injury/
Author : Aditi Kinkhabwala
Publish date : 2024-03-01 19:13:35
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