ECU Football alum, Pats’ DC joins team for Super Bowl, talks about cancer

by | Feb 2, 2026

ECU Football alum and New England Patriots Defensive Coordinator Terrell Williams boarded the plane with the rest of the team as they left for Santa Clara, Calif., site of this Sunday’s Super Bowl.

Williams wasn’t sure he’d be able to do that not too long ago. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer back in the fall. Through a rigorous chemotherapy treatment, he announced last week he was cancer free.

He wasn’t so sure that was going to happen.

In an interview with the Hartford Courant, Williams talked about the struggles he endured to reach his health milestone.

“It’s so much more than wins and losses,” he said. “Trust me.”

The newspaper reports Williams went through five rounds of chemotherapy treatments and a month-long regimen of medications to get rid of all cancer from his body. It was discovered when he went to urgent care for flu-like symptoms on Sept. 8. The paper also reports he has elected to take a sixth and final round right after the Super Bowl.

“When you go through (cancer), you realize it’s not just you going through it,” Williams said. “Everybody that cares about you is going through it with you.

“If I didn’t have a stomach (virus), I would have never known that the cancer was there. I felt a little pain in my collarbone, but you feel a little pain, you don’t think that it’s cancer. I remember telling my wife that I think I slept wrong. Because sometimes I wake up, and my neck hurts, and so that’s what I thought it was. But it was more than that.”

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