Culture
Passion propelled Laiatu Latu from medical retirement to NFL first-round pick
Pate Tuilevuka could hardly believe what he was seeing. He was only at this tryout as a favor to an old friend, but it didn’t take long to realize he was watching someone special.
A person that big and that strong shouldn’t be that fast. That smooth. The possibilities felt infinite. The heights limitless.
Tuilevuka, the general manager of Major League Rugby’s Seattle Seawolves, thought that with a little training, Laiatu Latu could dominate. He reminded Tuilevuka of New Zealand rugby union legend Jonah Lomu. “Jonah was a huge, massive individual who had incredible speed and power,” Tuilevuka said. “So, as soon as I saw (Latu) … I just knew, ‘Aw shoot, this kid has all of that.’”
It was scheduled to be a three-day tryout, but Tuilevuka had seen enough after only a few drills. He was ready to sign Latu on the spot. But the 20-year-old couldn’t commit.
Latu liked rugby, and he was great at it, leading Jesuit High in the Sacramento suburb of Carmichael, Calif., to two national championships. His coach, Lou Stanfill, who helped set up the Seawolves tryout, described Latu as “clinically merciless.” If an opponent got between him and a scoring opportunity, Latu ran straight through their chest. If a player tried to score on him, Latu caved their chest in.
Of course we dug up Laiatu’s high school rugby highlights. 💥
(via @Hudl) pic.twitter.com/QsfJYla7nW
— Indianapolis Colts (@Colts) April 26, 2024
“He was a man among boys, especially in his senior year,” Stanfill said. “He was 6-foot-4, 250-260 pounds, could run, could hit, could jump. He could do everything and he was coachable in everything.”
But even though Latu could do it all on a rugby pitch, his heart belonged elsewhere. A neck injury he suffered at the University of Washington just months prior was supposed to keep him off the football field forever. But Latu wasn’t ready to accept that, so he turned down Tuilevuka and the Seawolves — and a potentially fabulous life.
“If Laiatu wanted to go play rugby, he would play overseas, and he would be a big name,” Stanfill said. “Everyone around the world would end up finding out who Laiatu Latu is.
“He would play here in the States for MLR. He’d get on the U.S. National Team, and then someone in France, England, New Zealand (would sign him). … He’d be making good money, living in France and playing great ruby.”
Instead, Latu defiantly rededicated himself to a sport that was supposed to be in his rearview mirror. “I told them that my passion is football,” Latu said of the Seawolves tryout. And three years after being told he’d never play football again, he became the first defensive player selected in the 2024 NFL Draft, his passion having become his livelihood.
After teams selected 14 straight offense players to open up the 2024 NFL Draft, the Indianapolis Colts made Laiatu Latu the first defender chosen. (Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
The text sent shivers down Kerry Latu’s spine.
“Mom.”
None of her four children ever sent cliffhanger texts, so this one-word message from her oldest son gave her an ominous feeling. Soon, she was talking to Laiatu and Washington’s medical staff, trying to piece together exactly what had happened during an awkward practice collision with a teammate in November 2020.
Laiatu remembers it vividly.
“I tackled the running back, and right after that play everyone was still playing and running around because I did it pretty quick,” he said. “So when I turned around, my middle linebacker was running full speed and hit me in my face.”
Latu experienced numbness in his neck and extremities “for like 10 seconds” and initially thought he’d suffered a stinger. Trainers decided to keep him sidelined for the rest of practice out of an abundance of caution. It would be his last rep at Washington.
An MRI later revealed Latu had suffered a significant neck injury, the extent of which he has declined to specify publicly. He planned to sit out the remainder of a 2020 season already in disarray amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The family and university hoped his neck would heal on its own. But as the days, weeks and months went by, nothing improved.
“Eventually, the doctors were like, ‘I think we need to do surgery,’” Kerry said. “And from that point, the conversation started about medically retiring, and that was just gut-wrenching. … I thought maybe Laiatu was gonna have some say in it. But once they started talking about medically retiring him there was no looking back.”
Laiatu underwent neck fusion surgery in March 2021. Washington medically retired him in April.
“We would never want to put anybody in danger of possibly not being able to use his extremities the rest of his life,” then-Washington head coach Jimmy Lake said at the time. “We would never want that to happen to anybody.”
Lake added that the university consulted “five of the best specialists in the country, guys who have worked with different NFL clubs,” before choosing to end Latu’s career.
He was only 20, and he was devastated.
“I can’t imagine what he went through, because even I struggled with it,” Kerry said. “I kept thinking, ‘Not only is he a phenomenal football player, but he’s one of the most humble kids. I didn’t understand. Like, why is this happening to him?’”
It didn’t matter that Latu was weightlifting right up until the day before his procedure, even hang-cleaning a personal best 345 pounds. It didn’t matter that just two months into what was supposed to be a six-to-nine-month recovery, he picked rugby back up and was running and tackling with no issues. It didn’t matter that he was teaching himself pass-rush moves from YouTube videos while trying to flip his nightmare back into his lifelong dream.
“This one time he came to my office trying to explain to me how badly he wanted this,” said Ikaika Malloe, then Washington’s defensive line coach. “My doors are closed and I’m watching this kid break down in front of me. You cannot help but cry as well.”
Malloe remembers looking out his office window at Husky Stadium and often seeing Latu on the field training by himself. He wasn’t allowed to practice or work out with the team, but he prepared as if he was going to play every snap in Washington’s next game.
Malloe said he’s never seen someone as determined as Latu. But when Latu was fighting his way back to football, he wasn’t fighting alone. His coach and his family rallied around him because they knew how desperate he was for another chance.
When Laiatu’s then-8-year-old sister, Aulani, was assigned a school project that was supposed to be all about her. She was asked to fill in the blank: “If I had one wish, I would wish for …”
Her response? ” … my brother to play football again.”
My baby girl’s school project. ❤️😇 pic.twitter.com/FIimi8flWO
— Kerry Latu (@kerry_latu) August 26, 2021
When Laiatu resumed playing rugby in hopes of eventually returning to football, Kerry was a bit startled. All she wanted was for her son to heed the doctors’ orders and take it easy in his recovery, but there he was tearing through people on the pitch.
Each time Laiatu told her he was tackling with his surgically repaired neck, she tried to convince him to dial it back. Instead, he stepped on the gas. And when he wasn’t terrorizing opponents on the rugby pitch, he was ripping through imaginary foes on the football field.
Laiatu joked that his stubbornness was “the good kind,” and after a while, his unwavering self-belief pushed Kerry to do something that hardly anyone in Laiatu’s life was willing to do at the time: She listened. The two began having serious conversations about the possibility of reversing Laiatu’s medical retirement, and when he called Kerry in the spring of 2021 saying, “I’m not done,” she told him she wasn’t either.
Kerry never promised her son he would play football again. She just promised she would try to help.
She knew the outlook was bleak, “but as a mom, I don’t know, you just have this adrenaline in you,” Kerry said. “You want to make things better. You want your kid to be happy, and this is his passion. This is something he was good at. I didn’t think about it after that I just kind of went into go mode, and I just started searching.”
She sought out other football players who had significant neck injuries or conditions that threatened medical retirement but were able to continue their careers. Georgia linebacker Jarvis Jones bounced back and became a first-round pick of the Steelers in 2017. Clemson wide receiver Justyn Ross is a member of the two-time defending champion Chiefs.
As Kerry researched and networked, one name kept popping up: Dr. Robert Watkins, who performed the neck fusion surgery that allowed Peyton Manning to continue his Hall of Fame career. Kerry gave Watkins a call in August 2021, and two weeks later, she and Laiatu were sitting in Watkins’ Los Angeles office. Kerry remembers spending three hours there as Watkins and his staff reviewed all of Laiatu’s medical records and had him undergo several tests before eventually coming to a decision.
When Watkins walked into the room, Kerry and Laiatu held their breath.
“I’m comfortable clearing you,” Watkins told them.
Laiatu immediately broke down.
“I had that moment in my brain every day, and I just wanted to work at being the best at football,” he said. “The fact that it got taken away from me and I got to come back; I really got to prove to people that you can do anything you set your mind to.”
Latu wanted to resume his career at Washington after he was officially cleared in September 2021, but the university chose not to reverse its decision to medically retire him, so he entered the transfer portal. A few schools showed interest, including Cal and Oregon State, but Latu wound up transferring to UCLA. Malloe had been hired by Chip Kelly in December 2021 and advocated for giving Laiatu a shot.
And if the Bruins had any questions about Laiatu’s neck surgery, one of their consultants just so happened to be Dr. Watkins.
Laiatu Latu racked up 23.5 sacks over his final two years of college at UCLA. (Ric Tapia / Getty Images)
Latu was finally able to resume his football career with the Bruins in 2022. He recorded a sack in a win over Washington he had circled on the calendar. But even that moment of redemption couldn’t compare to when Laiatu faced and beat his little brother, Keleki, in UCLA’s regular-season finale.
Keleki, a tight end at Cal, saw Laiatu on his darkest days. Their matchup – the first time they’d ever played against each other – was one of the brightest.
“We were laughing,” Laiatu said. “But it felt really good, too, because as the older brother, I always wanted to show him what success looks like and I wasn’t able to do that for a time. So, when I got back on the field it was like, ‘Damn, he can really look up to me.’”
Keleki said he’s always admired his older brother, even when he was medically retired, because Laiatu embodied dedication and perseverance. Now playing at Washington, where Laiatu started his college career, Keleki knows the odds of earning another snap against his brother in the NFL are slim. But if there is one thing he’s learned from Laiatu’s journey, it’s that the odds don’t matter.
“When he was playing rugby and continuing to work out, it just made me think, ‘It’s not his time (for football to end),’” Keleki said. “So knowing that, I just prayed to God to see if he could give him another chance to play. Because now that he has it, I know he can be one of the greats.”
It didn’t hit him on draft night. It didn’t hit him when he first tried on his Colts helmet. It didn’t even hit him after he bought his mom a new house.
The moment Latu’s status as an NFL player finally sank in came after an OTA practice. The gratitude bubbled to the surface, and he could feel his eyes welling up. “I was just walking back to the locker room and I just started bawling,” he said. “That’s when it really hit me, when I seen that Colts sign on the facility.”
Back-to-back stellar seasons at UCLA convinced Indianapolis’ front office to select him with the No. 15 pick. The expectations are high, but early on, Latu has thrived under their weight.
GO DEEPER
How star OLB Laiatu Latu masters the unique craft of pass rushing — and why
Since the pads came out during training camp, Latu has often doubled as starting quarterback Anthony Richardson’s shadow. The rookie has wrecked enough drives to make Richardson admit he’s tired of seeing him in the backfield.
“Just getting around the edge, it’s like, ‘Man, I’m trying to hit the receivers in stride,’ but he’s there in my face trying to make a play,’” Richardson said through a wry smile. “I’m glad we got him in practice so I can get used to stuff like that.”
Colts West Coast area scout Chris McGaha first saw Latu’s dominance on film. Then, during the pre-draft process, he saw the heart that drives it.
“Sometimes you have to dig a little deeper to try to find, ‘Do they really love it?’” McGaha said after the draft. “But his (desire) was pretty easy to see, right? The things he had to go through, the things he had to overcome, it’s a unique story and a unique journey for him. It’s just a testament to him as a person, the kind of special makeup he has.”
The Latu family (from left: Keleki, Kerry, Aulani, Laiatu and Naite) pose on the field after UCLA and Cal met in the teams’ regular-season finale in 2022. (Courtesy of Kerry Latu)
Every now and then, Latu thinks about how different his life would be had he closed the door on football and opened it to rugby. He may be in France right now, fresh off an Olympic appearance. But while peering around the field after a recent Colts training camp practice, Latu took a deep breath and came to a simple conclusion about that life: “It just can’t beat this.”
The 23-year-old has a tattoo on his left hand: “Like your last,” his personal mantra since returning to football. He writes the phrase at the top of every page in his notebook during team meetings, always reminding himself of where he was and where he’s headed.
“I made it,” Latu said. “Through all of the trials and tribulations that I’ve been through in my life, I get to say that I’ve made it.”
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos: Ryan Kang, Christopher Mast, Todd Rosenberg / Getty Images)
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Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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