SYRACUSE — Victoriaville, about 90 minutes southwest of Québec City, is an unabashed hockey town. When it comes to NFL fandom, the New England Patriots used to be king.
But a favorite son, former Syracuse star Matthew Bergeron, has caused a shift in allegiance.
At a local youth football practice, half the kids might show up in Falcons gear. The most popular jersey is the No. 65 of Victoriaville native Bergeron.
The only football player from the town to ever earn a NCAA Division I scholarship, Bergeron became a star at Syracuse from 2019-2022, starting 39 games, captaining the team in 2022 and leaving as the 38th pick in the 2023 NFL Draft.
Earlier this month, Bergeron signed a four-year, $96 million extension ($60 million guaranteed) with the Falcons, tying him for the highest average annual salary of any guard in the NFL and making him the highest-paid Canadian NFL player ever.
It’s the largest deal for a former Syracuse football player since Donovan McNabb’s then-NFL record $115 million pact with the Eagles in 2002.
“It’s incredible for us to see Matthew reach this level,” said Diego Ratelle, his coach at Canadian prep school Cégep de Thetford. “It’s beyond anything we could imagine, especially for a guy from a really small town like Victoriaville.”
Bergeron has succeeded in the NFL just as he did with the Orange, moving into the starting lineup right away and opening holes for a standout running back.
At Syracuse, Bergeron led the way for Sean Tucker’s 2021 campaign where he broke Syracuse’s single-season rushing record and led the ACC in rushing yards. Last year, Pro Bowler Bijan Robinson was the beneficiary. No team’s running backs gained more yards or more first downs rushing to the left side of their offensive line than Bergeron’s Falcons.
For those who have known Bergeron since his youth, the sheer value of his contract extension stunned them, but they all agreed it was a deserved bump for a player who has excelled almost immediately at every level of his career.
His average annual salary of $24 million puts him behind only Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jamal Murray, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and R.J. Barrett among all Canadian-born athletes.
Ratelle said when he saw the news of his former player’s extension, he didn’t think it was real at first.
“I saw $96 million,” said Damien Irep, Bergeron’s former teammate and roommate at Cégep de Thetford. “I was like, ‘You talking about the same guy I grew up with in Canada?’”
Canada’s other highly-paid stars were blue-chip prospects by their teenage years.
Gilgeous-Alexander’s mother was an Olympian. Guerrero’s father is in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Barrett’s father is the general manager of the Canadian national basketball team.
Bergeron, the oldest of four children raised by a single mother, had no familiarity with football. His mother, Annie, signed him up for the sport because she received an informational pamphlet advertising activities for kids, she recalled to syracuse.com in 2023.
Before driving down for one of Dino Babers’ one-day summer camps at Syracuse in 2018, Bergeron hadn’t even seriously considered playing NCAA football — his intention was to play for Université Laval, a top college team in Canada.
“We didn’t even think it was possible,” Annie said in 2023. “It was a dream.”
Now, Bergeron could be the best Canadian football player ever. He’s had that potential all along, his former teammates and coaches said.
At a winter practice to introduce Bergeron to the Cégep de Thetford team, Irep saw a 16-year old Bergeron dominate 19 and 20-year old defensive linemen who had been in the program for two or three years.
Kevin Mackey, Bergeron’s coach at Cégep de Thetford during his final semester, used to group the 6-foot-5, 275-pound Bergeron with receivers in running drills.
“If he catches you, he can hurt you,” Mackey said. “So it gave him motivation to try and catch the receivers, and the receivers were scared, so they ran faster. It was a win-win kind of deal.”
When it came time for Mackey to hold bags for Bergeron during offensive line drills, his prized pupil punched the bags so hard that Mackey had to hide his pain.
When Bergeron made it to Syracuse for the camp that started it all, Orange coaches were immediately impressed. Bergeron displayed great change of direction skills and embraced the physicality of the position with nasty finishing, former Syracuse offensive line coach Mike Cavanaugh said.
“We were like, ‘We’re offering this guy. Holy moly,’” Cavanaugh said.
Back in Mackey’s office in Canada, Syracuse’s then-offensive coordinator Mike Lynch told Bergeron to get ready to start.
He improved his English quickly — his first language is French — and was a fast learner on the field. By late October, he was in the starting lineup, becoming the first true freshman to start at offensive tackle for the Orange in almost 20 years.
Since then, he’s started 88 of a possible 90 games for Syracuse and Atlanta, missing just two this past season with an ankle injury.
The Falcons did not make Bergeron available for an interview.
Though much of Bergeron’s life is in Atlanta now, he comes back home three or four times a year and speaks with local football players, Ratelle said. He explains his process and gives advice to players who are in the same position he was in not even a decade ago.
“Matthew is like a superstar now,” Ratelle said. “Really, really superstar because he’s cool, he’s a really grounded player. When he talks he’s really, really calm. All the players want to talk or play or exchange with Matthew because his dream came true.”
Bergeron also funded a small scholarship for local athletes and helped start an NFL Flag league in his hometown.
After talking with a couple of his longtime friends about the lack of flag football in Victoriaville, Bergeron was the key connection for the group to partner with the NFL and provided the equipment needed to start the league, said Félix Turgeon, a former teammate of Bergeron’s who helps run the league.
Bergeron pops by once or twice a year at the league’s tailgate party to sign jerseys and take pictures with fans. Though the league is no longer partnered with the NFL, Elevate Flag Football has grown to three divisions: boys, girls and mixed.
“He was able to come and attract a new crowd of kids coming in,” Mackey said. “Flag football has really taken off here, and I think he has a big part to do with it.”
Bergeron may be a thousand miles away in an unfamiliar city. But to those in Victoriaville, his influence is impossible to miss, Turgeon says.
The jerseys tell you all you need to know.
Said Turgeon: “Everybody here is repping 65 proudly.”