"On July 24, 2020 Laurent Duvernay-Tardif sent shockwaves through the sports world by becoming the first NFL player to opt out of the coming season. The only active player who is also a medical doctor, Laurent spent the months directly after winning the Super Bowl working in a health facility in Quebec on the front lines of the pandemic. As plans for the 2020 NFL season ramped up and daily cases continued to skyrocket, Laurent realized that playing and potentially spreading the virus was antithetical to everything he believed. For the first time in his remarkable career, he couldn’t square his twin passions of football and medicine. So he temporarily stepped away from the game he loved, returning to his medical work and enrolling in Harvard to earn his master’s in public health, hoping to maximize his celebrity status in order to effect change on a larger scale. But that was just the beginning of this fascinating story. As Laurent settled into his new reality, he quickly came up against a severe COVID outbreak in his hospital unit. Meanwhile, his team, the Kansas City Chiefs entered the playoffs as the #1 seed in the AFC and were favorites to repeat as champions amidst a season that saw countless games postponed due to league-wide outbreaks, including one in his own offensive line group in Kansas City. This fast-paced memoir will take you inside Laurent’s life as he grappled with his role as both a medical professional and NFL football player, taking readers on a journey into Duvernay-Tardiff’s remarkable personal story, where his insatiable curiosity and work ethic led him from his family’s bakery in downtown Montreal to his dual role as both a medical school graduate and championship-winning right guard in the NFL. From the incredible highs of winning the Super Bowl to the incredible sorrow of losing a patient on his ward to Covid, from the high of Super Bowl win to an unexpected trade, RED ZONE is riveting account of Tardiff’s incredible intelligence, determination, sacrifice, and conviction. It’s also a captivating story of one of the most fascinating and accomplished people in professional sports."-- Provided by publisher.

Previously published: Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Collins, 2022.