Weatherford, Coughlin count blessings after punter’s near-fatal crash
The last time Tom Coughlin spoke to Steve Weatherford was last Wednesday, the day the punter’s new daughter was scheduled to be born. He had called the Giants coach to apologize that his unborn child wasn’t operating yet on Coughlin time.
Three days later, Josie Jacyln checked in at a healthy and impressive 10 pounds, five ounces.
Less than two days after that, her daddy got a stark reminder how fragile life is.
Early Monday morning, after a delayed and diverted cross-country flight, the 32-year-old Weatherford nearly died in a frightening car accident on the New Jersey Turnpike. He was headed back from Washington, where his flight from San Diego had landed due to bad weather in Newark, hoping to make it to East Rutherford in time for the Giants’ “voluntary” practice a few hours later. Halfway through his trip, around Exit 8 at about 3:30 a.m., he drove full-speed into an unexpected flood.
His car, which he said was traveling about 70 mph (it wasn’t raining at the time, he said), “hydroplaned” and spun several times, slamming into the median before the vehicle’s airbags deployed. Then, when he was trying to call police, another car hydroplaned into his, going even faster. Somehow Weatherford emerged with only a few burns, cuts and a busted lip, and even managed to wake the other driver up and pull him to safety.
As he stood in the Giants locker room on Monday afternoon and described the ordeal, he used the word “blessed” over and over. “When something like that happens, you realize everyone is human,” he said. “I am very fortunate to be standing here.”
Coughlin, the Giants’ sometimes gruff, 68-year-old coach, felt exactly the same way, especially when he pondered the insignificance of why Weatherford was rushing back. For all the jokes about how the “voluntary” offseason practices in the NFL are really considered mandatory by NFL coaches, Coughlin hadn’t pressured Weatherford to return at all. In fact, when Weatherford called to apologize last week, Coughlin told him “That baby’s going to come when the baby’s going to come. You take care of your family and you come back when everybody’s safe and healthy.”
Everybody was, so Weatherford left, setting off a nearly disastrous chain of events that seemed to leave Coughlin shaken.
“(It’s a) difficult thing to talk about,” Coughlin said. “That is the first thing that popped into my mind as well. He rushed to get back here.”
Weatherford had already been away from practice for a week and, as he noted, Monday was “punt day” where he’d be needed to kick 20 or so times. His initial plan was to stay in San Diego until he could bring his new baby home, just like he had done with his three other children. When J.J. was late, Weatherford said he and his wife Laura decided to induce her labor, which would allow him
to catch his Sunday flight.
Obviously in light of the crash, he had some regrets, but his wife and daughter were doing well and his mother-inlaw was there to help get them settled back home. None of his decision seemed like a big deal until life took an unexpected turn. And maybe it wasn’t worth it just to get back for a voluntary practice, especially after Coughlin told him “Family first.”
But to Weatherford, the accident was a reminder that “family” has many definitions, something he recalled from the speech Coughlin gave the Giants the night before Super Bowl XLVI, when the coach said “You guys are my family. I love you.”
“It was at that point,” Weatherford said, “I realized we really are like his kids.”
In other words, the Giants are his family, too.
“It was a difficult thing under those circumstances to leave your wife and newborn,” Coughlin said. “But he wanted to get back here and he wanted to get back on the field with his teammates. He was saying all along when the baby was born he would be on a plane the next day.”
It seemed so simple, until Coughlin’s routine of morning meetings was interrupted by the awful news.
“You never want to hear that one of your family members — and I do feel like we’re a part of each other’s family — almost died,” Weatherford said. “He realizes how fragile life is. He’s lost players — Jay McGillis (who died of leukemia during Coughlin’s tenure at Boston College), for example. I don’t think he ever wants to go through that again, especially as sudden as this could’ve been, making an effort to get back to practice.”
“Thank goodness that he’s OK,” Coughlin said. “That was a scary, scary thing.”