How Laughing at Botched Giants Kick Saved Man’s Life After Seizure Scare
How Laughing at Botched Giants Kick Saved Man’s Life After Seizure Scare
Anna Lazarus CaplanTue, April 28, 2026 at 6:14 PM UTC
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Younghoe Koo botched a field goal attempt during a Giants-Patriots game in December 2025Credit: ESPN -
A Kentucky man is crediting an NFL kicker's botched attempt for saving his life
Mark Toothaker was watching a New York Giants game last December when he suffered a seizure after he laughed hard at Younghoe Koo’s missed field goal attempt
Doctors later found a benign tumor in his brain
A Kentucky man is crediting a New York Giants kicker for saving his life.Mark Toothaker, a thoroughbred trainer, was watching Monday Night Football in bed with his wife, Malory, last December when he suffered a seizure after laughing at then-Giants kicker Younghoe Koo’s epic missed field goal attempt against the New England Patriots in Week 13.Toothaker, 59, saw the whiffed kick once and then rewound it to play it again, he recalled to the . Then the seizure started. “I’ve never felt anything like this in my life,” Toothaker recalled. “I felt like I got electrocuted.”Malory, a nurse who happens to work for a brain-injury doctor at a rehabilitation hospital, recognized the severity of her husband’s seizure, and called 911 for an ambulance.
Follow your favorite athletes on and off the field with PEOPLE's free sports newsletter — sign up now!Later, at the hospital, doctors found a tennis ball-sized tumor on the left side of his brain.The tumor, which was removed, turned out to be benign, and Toothaker later went home days later with no further issues.
Now, the trainer at Spendthrift Farm — whose horse, Further Ado, is set to run the Kentucky Derby this weekend — is reflecting on how Koo’s missed kick potentially saved his life.“I could have had it on a plane, anywhere,” Toothaker told the AP. “I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t run over a family in my Expedition running up and down the road. I guess that would’ve been the hardest thing for me to live with if somebody would’ve got hurt out of this.”
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He added, “Believe me, as tough as that thing was, as violent as that seizure was, I have no memory of it and I would find it hard to believe that I wouldn’t have hurt somebody or hurt myself if I would’ve been behind a wheel.”
Koo — whose kick-attempt also drew laughter from Peyton and Eli Manning and their ManningCast guest. Danny DeVito, at the time — remains unsigned to a team after the Giants waived him at the end of the season.
on People
Source: “AOL Sports”
