Laurent Duvernay-Tardif

Laurent Duvernay-Tardif
No. 76 Kansas City Chiefs
Position: Offensive tackle
Personal information
Date of birth: (1991-02-11) February 11, 1991
Place of birth: Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Quebec
Height: 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m)
Weight: 321 lb (146 kg)
Career information
High school: Collège Saint-Hilaire (Mont Saint-Hilaire)
University: McGill
NFL draft: 2014 / Round: 6 / Pick: 200
CFL draft: 2014 / Round: 3 / Pick: 19
Career history
Roster status: Active
Career highlights and awards
Career NFL statistics as of Week 17, 2015
Games played: 16
Games started: 13
Player stats at NFL.com

Laurent Duvernay-Tardif (born February 11, 1991) is a Canadian professional American football offensive tackle for the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League (NFL). He was drafted by the Chiefs in the sixth round of the 2014 NFL Draft. He played college football at McGill and is the tenth player in NFL Draft history to be selected from a Canadian university.

Early life

Duvernay-Tardif was born in Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Quebec and grew up in Montreal. He played football as a child, but did not play in high school. His native language is French.[1]

College career

Duvernay-Tardif attended McGill University, where he was member of the McGill Redmen football team from 2010 to 2013. As a senior, he won the J. P. Metras Trophy, recognizing the Most Outstanding Lineman in the CIS, and was named an All-Canadian for the second consecutive season.[2]

He balanced college football with his studies in medicine. In a 2014 article in Sports Illustrated, Joan Niesen said that he "was practicing just once a week—and he was still the best college player in Canada."[3]

Professional career

2014 NFL Draft

Duvernay-Tardif attended a pro day in Montreal, which was attended by nine teams from the NFL and four from the Canadian Football League (CFL). He ran a 4.94-second 40-yard dash, registered a 31.5 inch vertical and completed 34 reps on the bench press.[4] He was drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs in the sixth round (200th overall) of the 2014 NFL Draft.[5] Since the inception of the NFL Draft, Duvernay-Tardif is the tenth player to be chosen from a Canadian university.[6]

CFL Draft

In the CFL's Amateur Scouting Bureau final rankings, he was ranked as the best player of players eligible for the 2014 CFL Draft, a position he held throughout the entirety of the season.[7] However, due to the uncertainty as to his availability as a result of his selection in the NFL Draft, he fell in the draft. He was drafted by the Calgary Stampeders in the third round (19th overall).[8]

Kansas City Chiefs

On May 14, 2014, he signed with the Kansas City Chiefs to a rookie contract.[9]

On September 13, 2015 Duvernay-Tardif made his first career start for the Chiefs playing against the Houston Texans. They won 27-20.

Personal

Duvernay-Tardif continues to study toward a medical degree. In May 2014, he commented, "I’m in my third year of medicine and have one more year in order to become a doctor. The plan right now is that I’m going to be able to do two months per year during the offseason for four years, and I’m going to graduate as a doctor in probably 2017 or 2018 or something like that."[10]

He has been working with the developers of Shockbox, a device that is placed inside of football helmets to measure the impacts received on the field. Duvernay-Tardif says that he hopes that his work will help to prevent concussions in football.[6]

He is the grandson of former Quebec cabinet minister Guy Tardif.[11]

References

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Sunday, May 01, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.