By Lisa Zimmerman, Player Engagement Insider
While several NFL alumni have followed their football careers with careers in medicine, few, if any, of them pursued that second career while still playing. That’s not the case for Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, currently a guard with the Kansas City Chiefs and a medical student at McGill University in Montréal, Canada.
This balancing act is not new for Duvernay-Tardiff, a native of Montréal, who also played college football while launching his medical studies. And he has always put 100% effort into everything. During his senior year he won the J. P. Metras Trophy as the Most Outstanding Lineman in Canadian university football.
In 2014, the now-26-year-old was considered the top prospect for the Canadian Football League. However, when interest from the NFL turned into a sixth-round Draft pick by the Chiefs, Duvernay-Tardif took the leap and headed to the United States.
He did it all with a carefully laid out plan that he developed together with his agent and the Dean of Medicine at the medical school. Having completed his classroom work, Duvernay-Tardif spends his offseason and the summer break before training camp doing his clinical rotations, and he is scheduled to graduate in May 2018.
Once he graduates, he may have to put his residency on hold until his NFL career is complete, but Duvernay-Tardif not comfortable doing nothing so, he is already keeping his eyes and ears open for other interesting opportunities to fill his off-time, and avails himself of the resources offered by the NFL. That included recently trips to the NFLPA in Washington, D.C. and to the NFL headquarters in New York City where he spoke with people in various departments to learn what else he might be able to take advantage of.
“For me I wanted to know what was available in terms of plans for after-career projects and in-career projects, things like MBA programs,” he said. “I wanted to know my options because when you know your options you make better decisions.
“We’re really lucky, and we forget that the NFL is a big, big, big machine that has multiple branches and they can help you with a ton of things. They say the shield of the NFL is powerful. If you play football, when you’re done it’s over so, while you’re playing you have to learn about [your options].
“People are so welcoming. The atmosphere is different than a normal corporate office. They were glad to see me and talk about what they were doing in a passionate way.”
Duvernay-Tardif sees everything in life as an opportunity to grow, and in his particular case, as a way to learn more about people and others’ experiences, which he hopes will ultimately make him a better doctor. And playing football has also had a big impact on his overall growth.
“To practice medicine, you need some background, and to experience things in life that help you understand what your patients are going through,” he said. “In football, every day you learn how to lose even though you’re playing at the highest level and that helps the transition into medicine. You’re not going to win every battle. You need something else where you learn to lose, and learn the hard way, and it helps you become a better doctor.”
To that end, he has also launched the Laurent Duvernay-Tardif Foundation, which is focused on helping children achieve a healthy balance in their own lives between sports and their studies. Duvernay-Tardif has bought a school bus and has filled it with athletic equipment, and in June will visit schools in Montréal that don’t have extensive resources and will donate that equipment.
For Duvernay-Tardif, his NFL experience has opened up new avenues, and he is embracing every moment.
“It’s been a great journey so far,” he said. “I see football as more than just football. At 24 I left my country and implanted myself into a new culture and new country with new visions. It’s a great learning experience for football but also for other things. I know Canada and the U.S. are close, but sometimes with different mentalities. It’s a nice process to leave your tradition and culture and come to a new city.”
And he still has a couple of goals he wants to achieve. One, of course, is for the Chiefs to win a Super Bowl. The other is to walk on the field in 2018 with the back of his jersey reading: Duvernay-Tardif, M.D. He’s already researching to see if it’s something he will be able to do. Stay tuned.
Lisa Zimmerman is a long-time NFL writer and reporter. She was the Jets correspondent for CBSSports.com, SportsNet New York’s TheJetsBlog.com and Sirius NFL Radio. She has also written for NFL.com.