Kansas City Chiefs offensive lineman and Quebec-native Laurent Duvernay-Tardif doesn’t need to worry about what he’s going to do when his career in the National Football League comes to an end.

He can swap his football cleats and helmet for medical scrubs and a stethoscope.

For four years, the 27-year-old from Mont-St-Hilaire, Que., has balanced dual duties as one of the highest-paid guards for the Chiefs and as a medical student at McGill University, where he studies during the offseason.

And today, after eight years, he graduated, becoming the first active NFL player to hold a medical degree.

“I think it’s important to build a career that you’re going to be able to do a long time,” Duvernay-Tardif told reporters after his graduation ceremony. “Football is not really that.”

Duvernay-Tardif, nicknamed the “Canadian doctor” by his teammates, was drafted in the sixth round of the NFL draft in 2014 and became a starter in 2015. Last year, he signed a five-year contract extension with the Kansas City Chiefs worth more than US$40 million.

But he says that his graduation from medical school supplants those accomplishments.

“It’s the first time that I’m actually really, really proud of myself,” he said. “Football is an awesome opportunity in the sense that not everyone can play football and live off of that, but being a doctor is more than that. You get to treat people, you get to change them and you get to have an opinion that people respect, and it’s an honour to be a part of that community.”

While some of his teammates initially questioned his commitment to the team and the sport, Duvernay-Tardif said that some of them now come to him for advice about their sprains and strains.

He credits both his parents and Andy Reid, the coach of the Chiefs whose own mother was one of the first women to graduate from McGill’s medical program, for pushing him to finish school.

“When everybody was telling me you’re going to have to make a choice between football and medicine, they told me you should go pursue your two passions at the same time and be the first to do it,” Duvernay-Tardif said. “It was really meaningful and helped shape the man I am today.”

He hopes that his journey will serve as inspiration to others who feel that they must make an impossible choice between two passions.

“For me, one of the cool things about combining both at the highest level was to show people that it’s possible to do it,” he said. “Being balanced is the key to success. It kind of gives you perspective.”

Duvernay-Tardif is returning to Kansas City tomorrow morning to join his team for a training session.

While he eventually hopes to begin a medical residency, his more immediate focus is winning the Super Bowl.

He hopes the NFL will let him put “Duvernay-Tardif MD” on the nameplate on the back of his jersey.

“I made an official request, but there are some rules in place so we’ll see what happens,” he said.

With a report by CTV’s Vanessa Lee