KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, an offensive lineman for the Kansas City Chiefs, lay writhing on the grass and clutching his left knee. It was a "Monday Night Football" game here at Arrowhead Stadium in 2017, and the 320-pound right guard needed a doctor.
Fortunately, one was close by. Before the medical team could hurry onto the field, Duvernay-Tardif turned his foot this way and that, wincing as he applied pressure to his knee area. The diagnosis: He didn't have a torn anterior cruciate ligament but a sprained medial collateral ligament, a more benign injury.
"Of course, I was biased, because nobody wants to tear his ACL," Duvernay-Tardif said. "But I was right; it was an MCL sprain."
The man knows his medicine. Duvernay-Tardif is the NFL's only active player who doubles as a physician. The 28-year-old Montreal native graduated from the prestigious McGill University Faculty of Medicine in May 2018 with a doctorate in medicine and master's in surgery.
In a small-world coincidence, that's the same school where the mother of Chiefs coach Andy Reid received her medical degree.
"He's brilliant," Reid said of Duvernay-Tardif. "Doesn't take long after talking to him to figure out that he's on the ball, and he'd be a great doctor. I tell him with those fingers that big, though, man, they're not going to have him do any small surgeries. He's a big man."
Everything about the 6-foot-5 Duvernay-Tardif seems larger than life, from his lumberjack beard and booming laugh to his unconventional childhood _ his parents once took their three children on a yearlong sailboat adventure _ to the round-the-calendar obligations he has in order to balance two consuming careers.
While he's an established veteran in the NFL _ the Chiefs will host the Houston Texans in the playoffs Sunday _ he's the equivalent of a practice-squad player as a doctor. He has his degree but still has to complete his residency, which typically requires from two to five years. He's leaning toward emergency medicine.
"I think one of the reasons I did well as a medical student in those emergency rotations is because of what I learned in football," he said. "It's that ability to be rational in stressful situations. When you're a student, you stress. You know your staff is going to quiz you on something, but you never know what's going to walk through the door.
Emergency medicine "is about being able to forget about the blood, forget about the people yelling. ... Being able to have that kind of approach in a stressful environment 100% comes from football. I hope to be a better physician because of football."
Early in his NFL career, Duvernay-Tardif felt out of place. A native French speaker, he started introducing himself as "Larry" to make it easier for teammates who butchered "Laurent," pronounced LOR-uhn.
"It took me a little longer to integrate fully into the locker room just because of where I was coming from," said Duvernay-Tardif, who speaks flawless English with a mild French accent. "Not playing the same football, not growing up watching football and knowing the NFL rules. I feel like when you get into an NFL locker room as a rookie, you for sure know somebody that you played against and somebody that you went to a bowl game with. You have connections. I had nobody."
Now, vive la difference.
"I think I kind of stayed true to myself," he said. "Everything that slowed down my integration as a Frenchman is now what makes me unique in that locker room. I want to stay true to where I come from. I love my culture, so I try to represent it."
Not all of his efforts to do that have been successful. The NFL denied his request to put "M.D." at the end of the 15-character last name on his jersey.
