A football story headed for the big screen this Christmas centers on a Giants running back whose name has lived on long after his playing days ended.
“Mr. Irrelevant” is a biopic about John Tuggle, the final pick in the 1983 NFL Draft.
The film, directed by Jonathan Levine, is set for a Christmas Day theatrical release and digs into the life of a player who made a real impact in New York despite the odds stacked against him. Tuggle was a star at Cal and became a key part of the Giants’ special teams during his rookie season before cancer changed everything in the offseason.
Tuggle’s NFL window was short, but it left a mark. He came into the league with little expectation attached to his name, then quickly became one of the Giants’ most important special teams players. In his lone season in New York, he earned Special Team Player of the Year honors and even scored a touchdown against the Eagles while filling in at fullback for the injured Rob Carpenter.
His career took a brutal turn before his second season ever got going. First came a serious knee injury that knocked him out for the year.
Then came a minor car crash involving some of his Giants teammates. Tuggle felt intense pain in his shoulder, enough to alarm the people around him, and after teammates urged him to see a doctor, he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.
Even after the diagnosis, Tuggle kept working. He was preparing for the 1985 season in remarkable fashion and, according to The New York Times, reportedly managed a 350-pound barbell clean and jerk. Carpenter remembered that effort clearly in a 2013 interview with The New York Times.
“He didn’t just keep working out,” Carpenter told The New York Times in 2013. “He was making strength gains. It was amazing.”
Tuggle never appeared in another game for New York. He stayed on the Giants’ roster until 1985, when his contract expired, and the team continued to cover his health insurance after that. But the grind of being away from football hit him hard.
“He needed football, that was his life force,” Carpenter said. “Not going to the facility every day was tough for him.”
He eventually returned to California, his home state, and told a former college teammate he wanted to die there. Tuggle went through experimental cancer treatment in San Diego and Tijuana before dying in his sleep on Aug.
30, 1986. He was 25.
Bill Parcells, who coached Tuggle with the Giants, still carried the memory decades later.
"I can still see his eyes, you know what I mean?" former New York head coach Bill Parcells told Giants.com in 2020.
"It's like it was yesterday. Those last few minutes I spent with him are really some of the most powerful periods in my life.
They really are."
The Giants also kept Tuggle close during their 1986 Super Bowl run, wearing a sticker with his No. 38 on their helmets.
“It helped the Giants reach their final destination,” Carpenter said.
Tuggle’s cause of death was respiratory failure brought on by angiosarcoma, a rare cancer that spread to both of his lungs. The disease develops in the lining of blood vessels and lymph vessels, according to the Mayo Clinic, and is rare enough that the National Cancer Institute says it affects one in every one million people. It makes up between 1% and 2% of all sarcoma diagnoses and is most common in people over 70, though it can strike at any age.
Tuggle was one of several Giants players diagnosed with cancer around that era. Doug Kotar died of a brain tumor in 1983, while offensive tackle Karl Nelson and linebacker Dan Lloyd both recovered from their diagnoses.
The movie’s cast includes David Corenswet as John Tuggle, Isabel May as Katie, Michael Shannon as Bill Parcells, Tuwaine Barrett as Leonard Marshall, David Krumholtz as Whitey Horai, Tandi Wright as Anita Faye and Ella Newton as Stephanie Tuggle.
Tuggle was also the focus of a 2013 30 for 30 short called “The Irrelevant Giant,” directed by Shaun Silva and Don Lepore. That film looked at his career and included interviews with people close to him, including Parcells.
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