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Derick Hall
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NEED TO KNOW
- Derick Hall won his first Super Bowl championship as a member of the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday, Feb. 8
- Hall was once given a "1% chance" to live by doctors after he was born four months premature
- The Mississippi native was drafted by the Seahawks in 2023 after he played for Auburn University, first using football as a means of "escape" when he was a child
When Derick Hall was born four months premature, doctors gave him an estimated 1% chance of survival. So, whatever the chances were that Hall would not only survive, but go on to become a Super Bowl-winning professional football player must have been astronomical.
The star NFL linebacker defied all odds on Sunday, Feb. 8, when he and his Seattle Seahawks celebrated winning Super Bowl LX after dominating the New England Patriots, 29-13, in Santa Clara, Calif.
"Everyone knows my story, what it took for me to get here, what it took for me just to be alive and have the chance," Hall said after the game, according to BBC. "I'm very blessed - kudos to [my] mom. That was a special moment after the game. I feel like she's an unsung hero, an unsung warrior through this whole process. She always fought for me. She never gave up.”
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Hall and his mother, Stacey Gooden-Crandle, shared a tearful hug on the field after the game, according to the Associated Press.
“Mom doesn’t miss a game," an emotional Hall told AP afterwards. "From the time I started playing football at 4 to tonight, my mom has been at every single game.”
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Derick Hall
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Hall and his mother have previously opened up about his harrowing early life story, telling ESPN prior to the 2023 NFL Draft that doctors warned that he could live his life in a vegetative state.
Stacey told ESPN “about 20 physicians and specialists” surrounded her hospital bed the night she gave birth. “They said to me that he had a 1% chance of living and that if he lived through the night, he would have no quality of life,” she told the outlet. “He wouldn’t walk, he wouldn’t talk. And they basically said to me, ‘Are you prepared to take care of a child like that?’ “
If not, Stacey recalled, the hospital staff asked her to sign a form that would allow them to discontinue life support.
“I did not sign that form,” Hall’s mom choked up in the 2023 interview, more than two decades after that night. “I could not. I had to give him a shot.”
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Derick Hall
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Baby Derick weighed just 2 lbs., 9 oz. and had no heartbeat after he was born. Miraculously, he began to improve within the first few weeks of his life. By three weeks old, the newborn was taken off his ventilator and given feeding and oxygen tubes, Stacey recalled to ESPN. Five months later, she and her son went home.
The challenges continued throughout Hall’s childhood, his mother said. A young Hall spent several days a week doing speech therapy and physical therapy, working to rehab the delayed cognitive and motor skills that came as a result of being born 23 weeks early.
“I just wanted to be a regular kid,” Hall recalled in the same ESPN E:60 segment. “But once I got into this game of football, it became my way of escape. I fell in love with it, and I took off.”
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Derick Hall
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Hall became a standout defensive player at Gulfport High School in Mississippi before accepting a scholarship to play collegiate ball at Auburn University.
In 2023, he was drafted to the NFL in the second round by the Seattle Seahawks, where he has since excelled as one of the defensive-led team’s primary linebackers. On Sunday night, Hall’s crucial strip sack of New England quarterback Drake Maye broke the game open and essentially solidified the Seahawks’ victory.
The now-Super Bowl champion reflected on his journey Sunday night, telling BBC: "Just being able to play football and what this game has done for me and my life and my family… I always love and respect playing this game, and I feel like I show that every single time I step on the field.”
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