For football players, the NFL is often like a passing train: there are those who are on board, and those who are left behind, on the platform.
Matthew Bergeron was hoping not to stay on the dock, and now he is indeed on board.
In his first season, at the age of 23, the offensive lineman is preparing to play his first game in the big world, when he and his Falcons teammates will host the Carolina Panthers , Sunday in Atlanta.
Sometimes, in life as in the NFL, you need a little luck, and that’s what the Victoriaville native got when left guard Matt Hennessy fell in action in August, victim of a knee injury that will keep him sidelined for the rest of the season.
Certainly not the perfect scenario for obtaining a position, but the train door opened, and Bergeron took advantage of it.
“I arrived here with the idea of working every day,” explained the Quebec player in a video conference Thursday. Matt got injured and he’s a friend, a teammate, and you can never be happy about something like that. I find it boring for him. But I was asked to fill a role, and my goal was to fill that role and to do it every day. »
But Matthew Bergeron doesn’t really have time to stop at that at the moment.
“I would say that I am excited like every year since I played football, since I was young in Victoriaville or then with Syracuse [in the NCAA], he was careful to add. Playing football is always exciting for me, no matter the league…
“But I don’t put pressure on myself, because I’m so focused on what I’m doing… So for me it’s just football. It’s a bigger league, yes, but it’s just football. When you are here as a rookie, you have to have a certain self-confidence, a confidence in your skills […] The offensive line is a job that is done in the shadows, and it is the beautiful thing about this position: my goal is to do my job to the best of my ability, and see the receiver catch a pass or see the running backs escape for long runs. That’s really what brings me joy. »
It is undoubtedly this joy and this great confidence that allowed him to land with the Falcons, he who had been a second round choice of the club, the 38th overall, during the last NFL draft. This status then earned him a four-year, US$8.97 million contract.
Between that and Victoriaville or football at the CEGEP of Thetford Mines, where he grew up, there is a whole world.
But it’s a world he likes.
“Guys like Benjamin St-Juste and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif had an impact on me, and I’m happy to now be in this position, and to show young people in Quebec that it’s possible…
“When I was little, I never would have thought it was possible, and from year to year, it’s a goal that got closer to me. There, I’m here… And even the simple fact of being here and being drafted, I didn’t think about it! It happened, and I’m really blessed. But I’m so focused on the work at hand that I don’t even realize it. I think I’ll only realize it when the season is over…”
