Now a newly-minted and much-heralded tight end for the Orlando Guardians of the XFL, Latimer completed the regular season Saturday afternoon against the St. Louis Battlehawks as the third-leading receiver in the league and as a much-respected presence in his team’s dressing room.
In the process, he’s likely played himself back into an invitation to an NFL preseason camp.
Better yet, he said, he’s become a far better version of himself than he was when his exile began after an arrest following a poker game argument in Colorado that escalated because of alcohol and a gun he fired twice as a misguided warning.
While the actions brought a two-year probation from the courts, it also got him released by the then Washington Redskins and landed him on the NFL Commissioners’ Exempt List.
His over-the-top reactions were fueled by alcohol use and he recently told Peter Warren, a freelance writer for XFL.com, that he’s now been sober for 16 months.
He told Warren that sobriety “has made me a better man. I’m more focused and more in tune with my family. I used to be angry all the time. Now I can communicate better. I talk to people, Everything I do and say is real.”
While he gets the most credit for this turnaround and the way he’s fully embraced his new football opportunity, the latter would not have happened without the help of some other people with Dayton ties.
“There certainly has been a Dayton connection in all this,” said Larry Lee, the Guardians’ Director of Player Personnel, who began his football career as an All-City lineman at Roosevelt and then Roth high schools in Dayton, before becoming an All American center at UCLA and then spending 17 years in the NFL as both a player (Detroit Miami, Denver) and later in the front office of the Detroit Lions.
While Lee, who joined the Guardians after serving as a director of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, the non-profit association that champions diversity in the NFL, was instrumental in getting Latimer onto his XFL roster, he said that would not have happened were it not for fellow Daytonian Ron Todd, the former All City lineman at Belmont High School who played at Bowling Green alongside Cody’s late father, Colby Latimer, who had been a much-honored athlete at Dunbar.
Todd, who now works for Ohio governor Mike DeWine as the Chief of Social Impact and Opportunity in the Department of Development, was once a sports agent who specialized in football.
He was also best friends with Colby and is Cody’s godfather. When Todd married later in his life, Cody served as a groomsman.
Although he has looked out for Cody over the years, Todd said this effort to get him back into pro football was initially spurred by yet another Daytonian, his cousin Scott Jackson.
Jackson, now the Director of Development at Hampton University, was friends with Colby when they were at Dunbar together in the 1980s.
Todd said Jackson was the first one who approached Larry Lee about Cody.
Although Lee was interested, Todd said Jackson had trouble reaching Latimer and sought him out for help.
“Cody doesn’t talk to a lot of people, it’s a thing of trust with him,” Todd said. “But I got ahold of him and asked him if he still wanted to play football. He told me he did and I told him he needed to call Larry Lee.”
Todd said Latimer was skeptical at first. He hadn’t played in three years, was now 30 years old and had gained some 30 pounds since he was a receiver and kick returner for the Broncos and the New York Giants.
“I said, ‘Cody, have I ever lied to you?’” Todd said. “He told me ‘No’ and I said, ‘Well, you need to call Larry. There could be something there.’”
Sports as an outlet
Cody was raised by his mom, Tonya Dunson, after she and Colby split up when their son was young.
Although Colby struggled with emotional and medical issues, Cody remained close to him and was especially affected when his father — just 40 ― succumbed to colon cancer in 2005.
Cody was just 12 at the time.
He once talked to me about the last time he saw his father, who was at Kettering Hospital:
“It was a horrible feeling walking in that room. Dad was real weak. He had all kinds of tubes in him and his eyes were yellow, but he was able to talk a little bit. He told me how much he loved me and how he wanted me to stay strong.
“The next day he was out of it and then ... he just died. It really hit me. I got so down, so depressed. I felt all alone ... like I’d lost everything in the world.”
He found an outlet in sports. In 2010, he teamed with the late Adreian Payne, to lead Jefferson High to the state Division IV basketball title. He won All State honors in football and also ran track.
As a wide receiver at Indiana University, he won All Big Ten honors in 2012 and 2013 and then became a second-round draft pick of Denver in 2014.
Although he was used primarily as a return man, he was part of the Broncos’ Super Bowl 50 championship team. He joined the Giants in 2018 and had his best season a year later. Playing in 15 games, he caught 24 passes for 300 yards and two touchdowns and returned 24 kicks for 570 yards.
After his 66-game NFL career derailed the following May, he wasn’t sure he’d ever play pro football again.
“He had to prove to other people he could play again, but I also I think he had to prove it to himself,” Todd said. “And to do that he just needed the right situation.”
When the XFL cracked opened the door, he showed initiative.
He called Lee and then paid his own way to a tryout with the team. Although he impressed the Guardians with his skills and his attitude, he still didn’t turn any heads among the league’s eight teams when the XFL Draft first began last November.
As 83 players were being chosen in front of him, he called Todd in dejection.
“He said, ‘See Big T, nobody wants me,’” Todd recalled. ‘I said, ‘Cody listen, as long as you gave it your all, that’s all you can ask. God’s got the rest.’”
The Guardians then drafted him in the 11th round. He was the 84th player chosen.
Credit: © Mike Carslon/XFL
Credit: © Mike Carslon/XFL
‘He’s done everything we asked’
Lee said the Guardians did have some initial concerns about how Latimer would fit in:
“You had to wonder how a guy with that kind of NFL background was gonna take to this league. He’d played six years in the NFL. He’d won a Super Bowl ring. Would he feel he was better than everybody else?
“Well, he couldn’t have been any better.
“Mike Tomlin, the Pittsburgh Steelers coach, has a quote. He says ‘I’m looking for volunteers. Not hostages.’ And that’s been Cody, He volunteered for everything.
“None of this was a gift. He earned it all. He’s been humble,, He’s worked hard. He’s done everything we asked.”
That has included moving from wide receiver to tight end to accommodate his added weight, which, Lee said, is now a chiseled 235 pounds or so.
In an aside, Todd noted that Cody is now the same size as his dad was when he played linebacker at Bowling Green:
“And what Cody didn’t know was that when his dad was coming out of Dunbar, he was recruited by the University of Cincinnati and Miami University as a tight end. But he wanted to play defense and went to Bowling Green.”
After his father’s death, Cody found ways to honor and remember him.
He has “Colbster”, his dad’s nickname, tattooed on his side. Throughout his career, he donated his time and money to the American Cancer Society and he especially embraced children fighting the disease and other health issues.
He once told me he plays every game with ‘”my dad on my mind.”
This season, Colby Latimer certainly would have been proud of what his son did on the field.
Lee said Cody is a “nightmare” for defenders because of his size, ability to run routes and make catches: “You can try to cover him but he’s a pro. He knows how to get open and he still has the speed to do so. And he makes yards after a catch.”
With the three catches he had against St. Louis on Saturday, Latimer finished the season with 50 receptions for 593 yards and four touchdowns. He finished third in the league in receptions and fourth in receiving yards this season.
Lee said Latimer is valuable off the field, too. He called him the “leader of the team” and said the other players looked up to him.
“I’ll tell you, watching him, I feel like a proud uncle,” Lee said with a chuckle.
“Taking him was one of the best moves we ever made.
“He should be in somebody’s NFL camp and I’m going to do all I can to help him get in one. Some teams are already inquiring about him. They know what he’s done.”
They too appreciate his return-to-glory story.
Credit: © Matt Pendleton/XFL
Credit: © Matt Pendleton/XFL
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