For two years now, Laurent Duvernay-Tardif has been drawing up a list of pros and cons before embarking on a new football season. This time, the list of cons was longer.
The 32-year-old Quebecer officially announced his retirement from professional football on Thursday on the pitch at Percival-Molson Stadium, after a nine-year career in the NFL.
“For two years, at the start of each season, I have drawn up a list of pros and cons,” he said during a press conference during which he often held back tears. This time, only the love of football remained on the list of pros. It always will be, but it’s time for me to let go [le football]. I am retiring in peace with lots of great projects, but I know at the same time that I am turning a page that will be difficult to close. »
Duvernay-Tardif played with the Kansas City Chiefs from 2014 to 2021 and then with the New York Jets for part of the 2021 and 2022 seasons. He notably won Super Bowl LIV with the Chiefs in 2020, “probably the only organization that believed in my project of combining medicine and football.”
The player from Mont-Saint-Hilaire was selected by the Chiefs in the sixth round of the 2014 NFL draft, after having worn the colors of McGill University from 2010 to 2013. However, the path was tortuous before reach the Goodell circuit.
“I had this crazy dream of playing in the NFL. When I went to see the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University to ask them to combine medicine and football, they were on board. That’s when I went to train in the United States, in the crazy hope of being drafted. But I wasn’t even invited [à la séance d’entraînement de la centrale de recrutement]. Just when I thought it was over, Sasha (Ghavami, his agent, but above all his best friend) told me: we’re going to do it in Quebec on the “combine”. »
Ghavami set out to send a DVD of Duvernay-Tardif’s best moments to all 32 NFL teams. Nine responded positively to this invitation for a first session of its kind to be held in Quebec. It was after this session that the Chiefs decided to try their luck with him. He quickly became a starter and the team, with youngsters Travis Kelce, Patrick Mahomes and Tyreek Hill, started winning.
“We made the playoffs by the skin of our butts in my second season, then we started winning more often. We continued with sectional titles, we reached the Association final, then in 2020, we won the Super Bowl. »
Duvernay-Tardif would later say he was part of one of the greatest teams in NFL history. But this is not his greatest accomplishment.
“In 2017, my mother told me to go back to medicine, otherwise I would never go back. She was right. What followed was a great series of victories in Kansas City, but above all, my graduation, which is the greatest personal accomplishment of my life. That was the goal I set for myself. To answer all those who told me that it was not possible to combine these two passions for medicine and football.
“To have ignored all those people and do it and hear the announcer introduce me as Dr. Duvernay-Tardif at my first game after graduating, it’s pretty powerful. […] This is the moment that made me most proud of my personal performance in the NFL. The Super Bowl is a team accomplishment. If Pat [Mahomes] Had it not been for the Chiefs, there would have been no Super Bowl. If Laurent hadn’t been with the Chiefs, there probably would have been a Super Bowl! »
After an injury which caused him to miss a good part of the 2018 season, “LDT” once again defied the odds by regaining his place in the lineup. The Chiefs would then experience a series of successes which would lead them to conquer Super Bowl LIV, on February 2, 2020, in front of the San Francisco 49ers. “It wasn’t easy in 2018. I wondered what I was doing on a therapy scooter for 12 weeks, in a city that I knew, but which was not our home. When I came back to the game we were involved in a title race. We couldn’t have written the script better than that. »
The same year, Duvernay-Tardif was named personality of the year by Sports Illustrated magazine, in particular because of his involvement in Montreal hospitals at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Duvernay-Tardif says his agent received calls from a few NFL teams, but he didn’t want to know about them: his choice was made. He will now complete his residency at the Jewish Hospital of Montreal, in addition to being involved in its foundation.
“I remember that we lived in a 3½ at the corner of Atwater and Sherbrooke, Flo (Florence Dubé-Moreau, his partner) and me. In the door frame there was a message saying how we were going to get to the NFL. We did it. »