From Super Bowl champion to hospital worker, why one NFL player decided to give back

What Laurent Duvernay-Tardif did was truly remarkable
By Mo Hussain, Sports Reporter

Months after he won the Super Bowl and the pandemic hit, Laurent decided to opt out of the 2020 NFL season and use his medical experience to work in the front lines.

While the Kansas City Chiefs continue to try and build on last year’s Super Bowl victory on the gridiron, one player associated with the franchise is looking to build on that success on the front lines of battling the coronavirus pandemic.

Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, a Canadian-born football player who last played for the Chiefs when they won the Super Bowl in 2020, is also a medical school graduate from McGill University. Earlier this year, months after he won the Super Bowl and the pandemic hit, Laurent decided to opt out of the 2020 NFL season and use his medical experience to work in the front lines. “Five years from now, I don’t want to be looking back at this year and saying, ‘well I could’ve helped, I could’ve done something about it.’ I really felt like I needed to be here and to try to help to the best of my ability,” said Laurent in an interview with Sports Illustrated after named the 2020 Sports Illustrated sportsperson of the year.

Laurent worked in a long-term care facility in Montreal as an orderly, where he is “doing nursing tasks and handling medications on a day-to-day basis with patients.” He also says that his job requires him to see the same patients repeatedly and “feed them, change them, wash them, give them their medication.” He came to realize that his job is also about “taking the time to embrace the role of trying to be the patient’s closest friend in this challenging time because they don’t see anybody else.”

Laurent still has to complete his residency in order to become a fully licensed doctor but the fact that he is using his platform and contributing to help those in need at such a crucial time is truly remarkable.