BIOGRAPHY
Giovani Bernard was born on November 22, 1991, in West Palm Beach, Florida. He is a running back in the NFL.
He attended St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida where he was rated the No. 2 RB in Florida by the Orlando Sun-Sentinel, helping guide Raiders to consecutive Class 5A state titles as a sophomore and junior, followed by a 13-1 season as a senior.
Bernard enrolled in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and played for the North Carolina Tar Heels football team from 2010 to 2012. During the third day of practice his freshman year, he tore his ACL in his right knee after trying to cut away from a defender and redshirted for the 2010 season. His junior year, head coaches in the ACC voted Bernard to All-ACC first-team and Bernard was second in player-of-the-year and offensive player-of-the-year voting. He also won the CFPA Punt Returner Trophy for the 2012 season.
On December 14, 2012, Bernard announced that he was entering the 2013 NFL Draft. He was projected by the majority of analysts and scouts to be selected anywhere from the first to third round. He was ranked the fourth best running back and 67th best prospect by NFLDraftScout.com. He became the starting running back in his second season, 2014, with the Bengals. Two seasons later he tore his ACL, putting him on injury reserve. After the Bengals drafted RB Joe Mixon, Bernard holds a second string position as a running back.
He is the son of Haitian immigrants who established a dry cleaning business in Boca Raton and has made trips to Haiti during offseasons for community work. In 2011, when he made successful comeback from serious 2010 knee injury (ACL tear), he won Atlantic Coast Conference’s Brian Piccolo Award, for players displaying the most courage.
In 2021, he signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
