Andrea Kremer on Chiefs OL Laurent Duvernay-Tardif's impact during the COVID-19 crisis | Yahoo Sports NFL Podcast

HBO Real Sports' Andrea Kremer speaks with Yahoo Sports senior NFL writers Terez Paylor and Charles Robinson after interviewing Kansas City Chiefs OL Laurent Duvernay-Tardif about his impact during the COVID-19 crisis as a volunteer nurse's assistant in Canada. Hear the rest of the conversation on the Yahoo Sports NFL Podcast.

Video Transcript

TEREZ PAYLOR: On the latest edition to real sports, which should be up by the time is drops, you have a follow up interview with Chiefs Guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, who is serving on the front line to combat the pandemic. And you also interviewed him back in 2018. First of all, what made you want to dive back in to talking to Larry? And you seemed to get a little juiced from interviewing him, because I could feel how much you were into it.

ANDREA KREMER: He's such a likeable guy, and you know, you're in Kansas City. You probably deal with him quite a bit. He is just-- that's a really good word, I think, is likeable. One of the things that I love about real sports is that we do go back, and we take stories or compelling personalities, profiles. And we go back, and we revisit them.

So as soon as Laurent became a Super Bowl champion and the first French Canadian to be so, we thought, let's update it. We scheduled a time to go up there in March, and needless to say, that didn't happen. So even though he has his medical degree, he hasn't started his residency, so he is very limited.

And then all of a sudden, he got word that he could volunteer. He talked about how all of a sudden, this notion that sort of sounded really great became a reality. He had to talk with his family about it. He had to talk with his girlfriend, Florence, about it. They live together. What is this going to be like? This is for real now, and he could work as basically an orderly or as a nurse's assistant.

But he said, don't kind of pooh pooh that. Because the more that Laurent can do in this capacity, it frees up the nurses to do other things. So the Canadian government has restrictions right now as to bringing cameras into these long term care facilities, so we did as much as we could with him there. But then we got a chance to really visit at his home in Montreal and to do our main interview from there.

CHARLES ROBINSON: As I watched this, I was like, wow, I know this is very personal. This is really good. My significant other is a nurse. She's working a COVID unit. So as I watched it, I thought to myself, is she going to be able to get him to that space, where he can kind of open up about the emotional impact? And he did.

TEREZ PAYLOR: Yes, I noticed that too, man.

CHARLES ROBINSON: I was stunned, because you know, obviously, my girlfriend, it was sort of a situation where I thought, at first, the connection wasn't there. We weren't really talking about the emotional impact of it. And then eventually, you get to the point where it just becomes so overwhelming that you end up having that conversation. And when you got there with him and he talked about really how it was kind of had screwed him up a little bit.

Sort of absorbing it, and seeing it, and going through it as a journalist, it's amazing to be able to get someone there. But I can tell you, like as someone who lives with someone who has been on a COVID unit, it's a tough place to get to. And then when you get there, there's a lot of trust there that comes with sort of unlocking that moment.

ANDREA KREMER: I think that what surprised me-- and I was pleasantly surprised to that point. --is that he did go there emotionally. Because this is what's real. This is what people aren't understanding, and the New York Times had a terrific story about a nurse. And it just had this picture of her sort of sitting after she came off of her shift, and I'm sure that Charles has seen it. And she was just laying back like this, like it's exhausting.

So one of the things that's interesting is when Laurent talked to us, he was very careful, very much aware of not trying to make it about himself, like, oh, this is so tough what I'm going through. Because he relates it to what people who are like Charles's girlfriend, who are in these COVID units full time, what it must be like for them. And we hear about how people could undergo PTSD for a time after they've been in these COVID units, and I think this just gave a little bit of a glimpse into that.

The other thing that I had read about that, again, I was happy that he mentioned was how a lot of times, people, like Laurent, are the only connection to a patient's family. So the patients haven't seen anybody without a mask, and they haven't been able to talk. They can't see their loved ones, so you may play your iPad or your iPhone. And you're FaceTiming, and this is the only connection that you have.

And that's a pretty emotionally draining thing. You're seeing all these people crying. And again, in the back of your mind, you're going, my patient's never getting out. My patient's probably never going to see these people, again, in person, so yeah, it was just a reminder that this is-- we can talk all we want about games starting. And let's get back to practice. But this is all about the humanity of what we're dealing with and the great unknown.