MIAMI — His last name already is a hyphenated 14 letters, but Laurent Duvernay-Tardif should consider adding two more to the back of his Chiefs jersey.

Surrounded by Jr. and Sr. suffixes, he secured an unfamiliar prefix: Dr. Duvernay-Tardif earned his medical degree in 2018 from prestigious McGill University in Montreal and has changed the way NFL players are treated at the Super Bowl.

Need proof? In the haze of repetitive Xs and Os questions and sideshow gags, Duvernay-Tardif was asked about the threat posed by coronavirus.

“I listened to a few medical podcasts about it, but I’m not an expert, for sure,” he said. “There are similarities between that and SARs in 2003.”

Duvernay-Tardif, 28, paused for a second, as if remembering his surroundings — “Are we really going to talk about that?” he asked an attentive audience — before explaining how critical it is to quarantine the virus in the first week of an outbreak.

The Chiefs drafted Duvernay-Tardif in the sixth round in 2014 — the 10th player ever selected from a Canadian university — and stayed patient through his development. The advantage Duvernay-Tardif had in brainpower was offset by a lack of experience compared to his SEC- and Big Ten-groomed brethren.

“When I first got in the NFL, my football IQ was not as high as my real IQ,” Duvernay-Tardif said. “I had to learn to play American football and the playbook itself. That took me a good year because there are so many little details. The discipline of going through medical school and taking notes helped me assimilate the playbook faster.”

Duvernay-Tardif did not play as a rookie and, even as he became a regular starter at right guard, sporadically missed offseason practices with coach Andy Reid’s blessing to tend to academic obligations. He took the same mindset to both areas of study: First one in the door, last one out at night and jot down everything doctors/coaches taught.

“My field of interest is emergency medicine [where] a lot of things can happen and you never really know what’s going to step through the door,” Duvernay-Tardif said. “I feel like playing football in critical situations — third-and-10 and you have to protect Pat [Mahomes] in order to get a first down — is a really stressful situation.

“You have to be able to rationalize it and make logical decisions with all the noise from the crowd. It’s kind of the same thing in medicine. You see a patient and there can be blood and different things going on, but as a team being able to focus on what’s important: Airway breathing, circulation, vital signs. For sure, I think football is going to help me be a better physician.”

Duvernay-Tardif is combining his two passions to help helmet companies bring shock-absorbing technology to football to measure the impact of collisions and limit concussions. He remains an advocate for football in the safety-conscious world, where enrollment in the sport is declining at youth levels as medical studies show the potential for lasting brain damage.

“I learned so much with football,” Duvernay-Tardif said. “There are some health concerns, but I feel like you have to look at the big picture: People who do team sports, who are active, who play football, I think are better leaders, better humans, more balanced.”

Duvernay-Tardif, who signed a five-year, $42.3 million contract, favors flag football until an age when contact is safer and required. He understands why some will stay away completely.

“You ask yourself: Do I still want to play football? Is it worth it?” Duvernay-Tardif said. “For me, right now, it’s 100 percent worth it. Look where we are right now. But you do ask yourself the question. It’s totally normal.”

For more on the Giants, listen to this episode of the “Blue Rush” podcast: