Jerry Latin | THE BIG RED ZONE

Jerry Latin, who played running back for the St. Louis Football Cardinals from 1975-1978, passed away this morning at the age of 71.

One of the greatest football players to come out of Rockford, Illinois, Latin starred at Rockford East High School and played college ball at Northern Illinois University.

After an injury-plagued senior season in DeKalb, the Cardinals selected Latin with their eleventh round pick in the 1975 NFL Draft.

“I was the last pick by the Cardinals,” Latin said in a 2020 interview in the Rockford Register Star. “I look at a guy like Jim Germany. He was the second-round pick out of New Mexico State,” Latin said. “If I hadn’t gotten hurt, could I have been a second-round pick?”

“I just went there to see what it was all about,” he said of his first training camp. “Then I got on the field and I saw that I hit just as hard as they did. I ran just as fast. I was just as good.”

Latin backed up Pro Bowl running back Terry Metcalf during his stay in St. Louis. But, he got his chance to shine in the 1975 season finale against the Detroit Lions and made the most of it.

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As we move closer to the 2023 NFL Draft (April 27-29), The Big Red Zone is looking back on each of the 28 St. Louis Cardinals drafts (1960-87). This installment focuses on the 1975 Draft, which was held January 29-30 in New York.

Looking at the list of players the Cardinals selected in the 1975 NFL draft, coach Don Coryell sounded pleased.

“I don’t think we’ve picked a guy who doesn’t have a chance to make our club,” Coryell told the Post-Dispatch. Then, winking, he said, “And some of them have an excellent chance.”

That was in late January, shortly after the draft. Six months later, when training camp started, Coryell more likely was rolling his eyes, not winking them.

Of the 15 players the Big Red drafted, 10—67 percent—never played in the NFL. Of the remaining five, two started their NFL careers with other teams. That left first-round pick Tim Gray, 10^th-round pick Mike McGraw, and 11^th-round pick Jerry Latin as the only players who made the 1975 roster—and only Latin, a running back from Northern Illinois who Coryell said could be “the sleeper of the draft” lasted more than one year in St. Louis.

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