Special teams coach McGaughey in cancer battle
Giants special teams coordinator Thomas McGaughey revealed Thursday that he has been battling cancer while continuing his duties on Pat Shurmur’s staff.
So the organization has been navigating one of its most critical offseasons with both GM Dave Gettleman (lymphoma, in remission) and McGaughey powering through chemotherapy.
“This past offseason, they found a growth in my bowel duct,” McGaughey said Thursday. “In that growth was cancer. They removed it. I had a very extensive procedure, called a whipple procedure, (a complex operation to remove the head of the pancreas, also known as a pancreaticoduodenectomy). During the whipple, they found a cancer in one of my lymph nodes. I’ve been doing chemotherapy for about the last two months. I’m going on my fifth treatment, and it’s going (well).”
McGaughey’s cancer is the reason why the team rehired former special teams coach Tom Quinn at the start of training camp, despite Quinn being let go after last season’s abysmal special teams performance.
At the time of Quinn’s hiring, Shurmur cited only general health issues that McGaughey had been experiencing. But there were a handful of days then that assistants Quinn and Anthony Blevins ran the show at practice and McGaughey was absent. And this explains why. Though he hasn’t missed too much time, remarkably.
“I go down (to the hospital), I do my treatment, I come back,” McGaughey said. “That’s what it is. Last time I did it, I had an extra day because it was the fourth preseason game. So, I had a little time. The next treatment, I’ll go down, do the treatment, then I’ll come right back.”
McGaughey, 45, said it was “good fortune” that doctors caught the cancer in the first place.
“I had two bouts with sepsis,” he said. “They went in with the little endoscopy. When they did it, they saw the mass. The mass is kind of how I found out … Now it’s chemo and I take pills every day. So just chemo, pills, treatment, chemo, pills, then I take a week off … I have a couple more treatments left. It is what it is.”
McGaughey was impressively positive about his entire outlook when asked if he ever doubted he’d be ready for this season, his first with the Giants after two seasons running the Carolina Panthers’ special teams unit. This is his second stop with the Giants after working as Quinn’s assistant from 2007-10.
“No, there was never a thought in my mind,” McGaughey said of possibly missing the season. “I’m sure my doctor’s mind, though, my family’s mind. My wife I’m sure had a bunch of thoughts. In my mind, I never even thought of that.
“As a football coach, you don’t think about (your energy),” he added. “You get up, you do what you do, and live life. I’m not going to let any chemotherapy or cancer or anything else get in the way of what I do. I’m a football coach. I’m a father and a football coach, and that’s what I do.”