Gone from KC Chiefs, Duvernay-Tardif was an inspiration who’ll always be treasured here
Some years ago, a recruiter for a major college football program half-jokingly told me, “You can’t win with doctors and lawyers.”
Presumably, the point was that those aspiring to careers requiring such academic rigor would be distracted or otherwise less intense and invested in the harsh essentials of football.
However he meant it, it was a cynical thought, especially if you cling to the belief that the concept of a student-athlete is not a contradiction but remains a worthy ideal even in this ever-evolving landscape. Indeed, it’s not hard to find reassuring examples of that all over.
But seldom can you see it as vividly or visibly or profoundly as we might in the form of Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, who demonstrated those virtues in a rare, arguably unprecedented, way ... at the professional level with the Chiefs these last few years.
And we all won because of what his time in Kansas City (including by association in absentia last season) demonstrated:
LDT, or Larry as he came to be known, emerged as a champion to embrace in every way during his time with the Chiefs, who on Tuesday traded him to the New York Jets for backup tight end Dan Brown.
The last time he played in a game was as a starting guard in Super Bowl LIV on Feb. 2, 2020, just days after the man who earned his medical degree while playing in the NFL had been asked what he thought about what most of us here still figured was a vague and distant threat of the COVID-19 coronavirus.
“I think,” he said, “it’s serious.”
Serious enough to change the world as we knew it … and serious enough that he was compelled to do his part to combat it.
So he soon became the first NFL player to opt out of the season and returned to his native Canada to toil at Centre Gertrude-Lafrance, a long-term care facility near Montreal. To serve others, and placing himself directly in harm’s way, he left his pro football career in limbo in his prime and forsook a $2.75 million salary (though it’s believed he was compensated $150,000 under negotiated terms of the opt-out).
Perhaps emblematic of the selfless and often underappreciated mindset of the offensive lineman, he also welcomed the less-glamorous work more typically associated with orderlies and nurses than doctors since he had not yet enrolled in his medical residency.
“If I am to take risks,” he tweeted when he opted out, “I will do it caring for patients.”
Even as he stepped away from this team for the time, his actions for what we might call Team Humanity reverberated here. That was “special,” quarterback Patrick Mahomes said on Wednesday.
“Not a lot of people have that heart to be able to give (up) something that they truly love … especially after winning the Super Bowl with this team,” Mahomes said. “It just shows the type of person that he is.”
LDT’s tenure in Kansas City also reflects the sort of person that coach Andy Reid is.
When Reid was growing up in Los Angeles, his mother, Elizabeth, a radiologist, introduced him to a medical colleague: Danny Fortmann, who was drafted by the Chicago Bears out of Colgate in 1936 when he was conflicted over whether to play pro football or go to medical school.
The legendary George “Papa Bear” Halas lent his support to doing both, and Fortmann went on to become a Pro Football Hall of Famer as well as a doctor.
Reid always remembered that story, and when he met Duvernay-Tardif before the draft in 2014 he made it clear he’d back him in the twin endeavors. (Reid also enjoyed the fact that LDT was a student at McGill, where Reid’s mother earned her medical degree.)
Some other coaches balked at the notion.
“He was the only one who trusted me with medical school and saw the medical school thing as a positive thing,” LDT said last year. “And he’s been there every step of the way.”
The duality of LDT’s passions were evident immediately when then-general manager John Dorsey drafted him in the sixth round in 2014 and promptly called him a “very interesting fella.”
And not just because he was Canadian and played the violin and had twice been on approximately year-long educational sailing trips with his family. As it happens, Duvernay-Tardif was in his third year of medical school at the time and in the process of helping with an emergency C-section with premature twins during his rotation in a neonatal intensive-care unit on the day he was drafted.
Still, he seemed like something between a project and a curiosity initially, with much development in front of him … while continuing his medical education in the off-season. But maybe his finest hours as a Chief were in what he showed us all last season, as a representation of the best of us all.
That’s why among those who honored LDT in the last year was the St. Louis Sports Commission, which recognized him with a Musial Award for exemplifying sportsmanship in its purest form … even if it was in a different sort of way.
“I know you will be the first to note that you are one of many doing their part and you’d consider others on the front lines to be the true heroes,” Marc Schreiber, executive producer of the Musial Awards, wrote to LDT.
“But you also represent an exceptional example as an athlete who put aside his own comforts and success to join the battle. For that, you are most deserving of one of the most important awards in sports — an award that stands for character, compassion and generosity.”
At the time, Reid said, doctors are “givers, and they’re healers.”
In many ways when it comes to LDT, a one-man cure for cynicism who will always be treasured here.