The transfer portal was opened to thousands of players in 2021. But the player who made the most impact is the one who has. The most important impact of any college football defensive player this season is the one who wasn’t allowed to play for the past two years.
UCLA has worked the portal as well as any program in the country, but the path of the Bruins’ star edge rusher Laiatu LatuThis transfer, who is leading the nation in sacks/game and has helped transform what was a very poor defense into the Pac-12’s best-ranked defense, isn’t like any of their other transfers.
The season’s best comeback story actually started in August 2021. Latu’s promising career at Washington had been cut short by a neck injury just as he was starting to flourish for the Huskies. After a year of heartbreak, he finally got some good news: A doctor in Southern California — Dr. Robert Watkins, the same specialist who treated Peyton Manning — looked at images of Latu’s neck, put him through a battery of tests and cleared him to return to football.
Another gut punch followed shortly after. “He was so excited when he got back on that plane to go back to Washington,” Latu’s mother, Kerry, told The Athletic. “He was so hopeful they were gonna reverse their decision.”
But Washington’s team doctors wouldn’t allow him to return to the field for the Huskies.
