KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In a media session a year ago Thursday before the Super Bowl, Chiefs guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif was asked what he thought about the COVID-19 coronavirus.
Given that the pandemic still was perceived as something on a vague horizon from the view in the United States, presumably he was asked less as a football player than because he is a medical doctor.
“I think,” he said, “it’s serious.”
Consumed with preparing for the game as he was, it’s telling that he was cognizant of the virus some six weeks before it convulsed the U.S., Canada and the world itself virtually ever since.
“I mean, I’m coming from the medical world … so even back then I was kind of curious to know what was going on,” Duvernay-Tardif said in a video interview with The Kansas City Star on Wednesday.
If only so many others had been heedful as soon as Duvernay-Tardif, who later opted out of serving on the front line for the Kansas City Chiefs this season to serve on the front lines against the pandemic.
Not that he had any sense of the chaos and devastation that he said would soon “grow and cross the ocean and then come here and infect so many people.”
Certainly, he wasn’t concerned about it amid the euphoria of the Chiefs winning their first Super Bowl in 50 years. Nor was it weighing on him days later when he was among players stepping off a bus to dance and mingle in a crowd he thought of as “a million people” who showed up to salute the team at a parade in downtown Kansas City.
In hindsight, though, what was to soon descend makes him cherish those precious days all the more vividly.
Because that time was not only the pinnacle (at least to date) of his improbable football career but also represented to him the last time we could all connect and gather en masse without masks and social distancing.
(At least, I’d add, for those who care about their impact on others).
“Who would have thought that one year later we’re sitting in (this) situation?” he said. “And that I’m not working out with the guys right now in order to get ready for” Super Bowl LV against Tampa Bay on Sunday in Tampa.
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Instead of being immersed in the quest to repeat, he’ll be watching the Chiefs — and their depleted offensive line that perhaps could use this extra doctor in more ways than one — on a big screen TV alone in his apartment.
Never mind that we figure part of the NFL hoopla this week should include celebrating him along the fitting lines of what the Musial Awards and Sports Illustrated have done.
“Right now in Montreal, we have a curfew, so you’ve got to be home by yourself by 8 o’clock,” he said, laughing. “So I’ll be watching the game by myself, because that’s all I can do. And for sure it’s probably going to be tough, to be honest.”
And, no, he’s not going to break the glass on that framed Super Bowl LIV jersey seen over his shoulder during our call so that he could wear it and feel more a part of things.
“I’m not a big game jersey (wearing) guy when I watch TV,” said a smiling Duvernay-Tardif, who intends to return to the Chiefs next season. “I try to focus on what the O-line is doing, which sometimes is kind of frustrating because you don’t see anything when you watch the TV angle.”
Whatever pangs he might feel, though, are soothed by an enduring conviction over the decision he made facing a dilemma that might have left another person stricken with what the kids call FOMO: fear of missing out.
After all, this season represented an amazing opportunity, particularly for someone nearing his 30th birthday in February and playing in an unforgiving sport with an inherently fleeting shelf life.
And to be sure, he felt conflicted: “I mean, I feel like every tough decision comes with a little bit of regret. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a hard decision to make.”
Hard to make, perhaps. But not hard to honor. And not at one to regret, even as he wants to be clear this was personal preference and not at all a statement he thought sports should be shut down.
In fact, he considers sports vital now for connecting people despite some risk involved.
Just the same ...
“I feel like as a future physician, I had to err on the side of caution,” he said. “In order to look at myself in the mirror 10 years from now and feel like I made the right call.”
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His sense of that calling began to form in mid-March. Following the spread of the virus intermittently even at season, he returned early from a two-week sailing trip to the Caribbean with his girlfriend, Florence. Upon their arrival home, they were required to enter isolation for two weeks, like every Canadian who had been out of the country.
For perhaps a flicker of an instant of a nanosecond, he may have felt a twinge of mild exasperation with the feeling that the lockdown meant “everything is taken away from you.”
But what he calls being “egocentric” faded rapidly up against the dual serve-and-protect instincts we might expect to find in both a lineman and a doctor.
His mindset promptly became, “How can I help? And how can I be part of the solution?”
Initially, he was limited to helping promote new health measures because, despite earning his medical degree, he has not started residency training. But soon, with the pandemic spreading and many health-care workers ailing, the Canadian health ministry recruited and rallied health-care workers of every sort — including retirees, students and doctors in waiting such as Duvernay-Tardif.
And once he became engrossed in his role at Centre d’hebergement Gertrude-Lafrance, a long-term care facility for senior citizens outside Montreal, perhaps it was inevitable he would opt-out for the season — as he did with memorable words in a social media post in July.
“If I am to take risks, I will do it caring for patients,” wrote Duvernay-Tardif, who became the first NFL player to opt out and later was joined in that declaration by teammates Damien Williams and rookie offensive lineman Lucas Niang.
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Then, as now, his role is what he calls “an orderly-slash-nurse-slash-everything they want me to do.”
Cloaked in a face-shield instead of a helmet, toiling in a field where “red zone” signifies the COVID-19 ward instead of the verge of a touchdown in the vernacular of the game, he’s in the trenches in an utterly different way than that term gets flung around in football.
For instance, he’s often done such vital but unglamorous work as feeding and bathing patients, changing diapers and drawing blood among numerous other needs he helps fulfill.
But maybe there’s nothing more essential than what he seeks most to do: provide and demonstrate true care.
The one thing he knows he can give every day in a job where “you never really know what’s going to be happening” is to engage as deeply as possible with patients.
Whether it’s conveying undivided attention or helping them connect with family and friends through Facetime or even coordinating virtual visits from the likes of Montreal Canadiens players, Duvernay-Tardif knows he can bestow so much with each such gesture.
“The only people they’re seeing on a day-to-day basis is you,” he said. “So I feel like taking that extra time now, it’s so important.”
Suggesting such tenderness may have as much or more value in some cases as medicine itself, he added, “At the end of the day, what really matters is that your patients are comfortable and that they preserve their dignity.”
All of which can be draining, even for someone typically working there two or three days a week as he takes online classes from Harvard toward a master’s degree in public health.
The emotional toll, he acknowledged, can be “pretty intense” in work that includes escorting patients to the red zone and, alas, never having them return to the yellow zone.
“But I feel like you also feel a sense of purpose, and I feel like what I’m doing is also important,” he said. “And when I feel like what I’m doing is hard or difficult, honestly, I look at all the health-care workers who have been doing that for the past 20 years and some of them working overtime (for months) … Who am I to complain?”
Along those lines, the last year has intensified his appreciation for others behind the scenes: cleaning and sanitation workers. That’s why he’s collaborating with P&G’s Microban 24 antibacterial to recognize sanitation workers as MVPs (“Most Valuable Protectors”) who do thankless, often anonymous work crucial to so many and so much. The program is to provide VIP, behind-the-scenes experience at a future NFL event for all recognized, including a member of the Chiefs’ organization responsible for sanitization plans at Arrowhead Stadium and the Chiefs practice facility.
“Not that it’s easy to be a hero when you have a spotlight on you,” he said. “But it’s for sure easier.”
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Lest that be misconstrued, a hero is the last thing he’d ever consider himself. Even if we can call him that, this is a matter of doing his duty, he’s said repeatedly over the last few months.
Meanwhile, he also feels duty-bound to return to the Chiefs, though perhaps as late as training camp for the 2021 season.
There are a lot of reasons for this, from his love of the game to his allegiance to teammates. And it certainly would be prudent to consider the financial benefits; his salary next season would be $2.75 million. (That would have been his pay this season. Instead, it’s understood he was eligible to receive $150,000 negotiated by the NFL and the NFL Players Association for those who voluntarily opted out of the season due to the pandemic.)
One reason to come back, though, stands out more than others: his gratitude to Chiefs coach Andy Reid for believing in his twin passions when the Chiefs considered drafting him in 2014.
“He was the only one who trusted me with medical school and saw the medical school thing as a positive thing,” Duvernay-Tardif said. “And he’s been there every step of the way.”
Beyond the fact that it’s in the nature of Reid to think of the best interests of his players, there’s a cool backstory to it that merits retelling. Reid’s mother, Elizabeth, was a radiologist who went to McGill, the same school LDT attended.
Moreover, years ago she introduced her son to colleague Danny Fortmann, a Pro Football Hall of Famer who went on to become team physician for the Los Angeles Rams. When Fortmann was drafted out of Colgate by the Chicago Bears in 1936, Reid learned, he was at a crossroads of whether to play pro football or attend medical school.
The legendary George “Papa Bear” Halas solved it for him by supporting his aspirations to do both. Reid came to have a friendship with Fortmann and that history stuck with him as the Chiefs considered choosing Duvernay-Tardif — who the day before he was drafted 200th overall was supporting an emergency C-section with premature twins as part of his rotation in the neonatal intensive-care unit.
Even with Reid’s ongoing support, opting back in will present challenges after a year out and with limited training opportunities the last few months in particular.
With gyms closed, he adapted by building what he called a “pretty cool setup on my balcony” that includes a weightlifting apparatus or two.
Trouble is, well, a snowstorm got in the way the other day leading to what on Twitter he called a “temporary gym closure” with a photo of the issue at hand.
For all that, though, he believes he’s in “pretty good shape” given the circumstances and looks forward to his own version of the #RunItBack experience in the months to come. He’ll show up in the best physical condition he can.
And then, the bilingual Duvernay-Tardif added with a laugh: “How do you say it in English? ‘We’ll let the stones fall where they might be falling?’ “
Told the expression typically is to let the chips fall where they may, he laughed and added, “The chips, exactly, the chips.”
Here’s hoping they fall right. But whatever is to come, it’s what he did when the chips were down that told us who he really is.
And that will always be part of his enduring legacy from this season … even as he watches this Super Bowl home alone.
