Former NFL Player Myron Rolle Is Now A Doctor Fighting COVID

Years ago, Myron Rolle gave up football for a career in medicine. Now, he’s using his expertise to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

The former Rhodes Scholar and Tennessee Titans safety is now a doctor and third-year neurosurgery resident in Boston on the front lines at Massachusetts General Hospital. 

“I went down to the emergency department, and as I was walking through the emergency department I was seeing so many individuals with respiratory distress and respiratory compromise, and the numbers are staggering,” Rolle told ESPN. “Our neurosurgical floor has been transformed into a floor just full of COVID-19 patients.

“It is hectic, that’s for sure,” he continued.

According to Rolle, his neurosurgery department’s operating rooms could be turned into ICUs because of the exponentially increasing number of coronavirus patients. 

After graduating from Florida State in three years, he spent what would have been his senior year at Oxford University. In 2010, he was drafted by the Titans but never played in any regular-season games. He retired in 2013 in favor of medical school, but says football has influenced his work in the operating room. 

“Football has never left me,” Rolle said. “I still wake up in the morning and think of the operating room like a game, like it’s showtime, let’s perform. I gotta do what I gotta do because people are counting on us right now. This is our time to help very sick people. So that motivation continues to drive me every single day.”

Watch ESPN’s full story on Myron Rolle below.