Seattle Seahawks linebacker Derick Hall made NFL history with a tone-setting strip-sack during the Super Bowl against the New England Patriots last February.
There is little chance that a football player will experience a moment like this in his career. But Hall had to overcome much greater obstacles. Hall had a 1% chance of survival when he was born four months premature at just 23 weeks gestation, born without a heartbeat and suffering a brain hemorrhage.
“I’m not born…I breathe,” he told PK Press Club Digital. “I was stillborn.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON PK Press Club
Derick Hall of the Seattle Seahawks sacks Drake Maye of the New England Patriots during the third quarter of NFL Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California on February 8, 2026. (Brooke Sutton/Getty Images)
For his mother, Stacy Gooden-Crandle, the first days of her son’s life were filled with uncertainty and fear.
“Emotional, a lot of uncertainty, fear,” she said of her emotions in the days following her son’s premature birth. “But…those weren’t the feelings I had when Derrick was born. I just trusted that God would make everything right.”
This belief became central to how the family made sense of everything that followed.
“It’s probably the most important thing we share,” Gooden-Crandle said of their religion.
“We are people of faith and we have been for most of my life. I joined the church when I was 16 and I just grew up as a woman of faith. I raised my children in the church and instilled faith in them and just allowed them to flourish in their faith in their walk with Christ.”
For Hall, growing up in this environment gave meaning to struggles he didn’t yet understand.
“It was huge. It was amazing because I never really understood why me or my family had to go through what I was going through,” Hall said.
Derick Hall of the Seattle Seahawks watches from the sidelines as the national anthem plays before an NFL game against the Atlanta Falcons at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia on December 7, 2025. (Perry Knotts/Getty Images)
“My pastor always told me, you’re not dying for this, you’re blessed to be in this position and God has something bigger for you, and I think that helped me be comfortable with the situation and the things that my family and I endured during that time.
“I always talk about my faith because obviously I’m a miracle child, and I don’t say I’m okay, I say I’m blessed, I can’t complain, I’m above ground and I’m blessed… You can’t tell me that a kid with a one percent chance of living and who’s not supposed to walk, who’s not supposed to talk, who’s not even supposed to be alive, ends up being a Super Bowl champion one day without the Lord being in his life.”
Even after surviving childhood, the challenges did not go away and his childhood was very different from other children.
FROM MR. RELEVANT TO GENERATIONAL WEALTH, BROCK PURDY WANTS TO USE HIS LIFESTYLE FOR GOOD
“My hardest time was between the ages of four or five and 12 or 13,” Hall said. “I could go out and play, but it was only for about five minutes at a time and I had to sit for an hour just to let my body and my lungs catch up, and to this day my lungs are still underdeveloped, they always will be, they’ll always be three years behind.”
These boundaries extended to almost every aspect of his life, including the seasons when other children played freely outside.
But through it all, Hall discovered football, and his health wasn’t going to stop him from playing the game that would define his life.
Derick Hall of the Seattle Seahawks holds the Vince Lombardi Trophy on stage with teammates after winning Super Bowl LX against the New England Patriots at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California on February 8, 2026. (Brooke Sutton/Getty Images)
“I started playing soccer when I was four because I was trying to develop my body and get to the point where I could do things, and I fell in love with it because it was the first thing I was able to do to feel like a normal kid,” he said.
For his mother, this moment came with a difficult decision regarding her son’s well-being.
“It was difficult to make the decision to allow him to play, so I allowed him to play flag football at first, but to make that jump to allow him to play football when we were still seeing a neurologist every six months for a brain hemorrhage, it was a difficult decision,” she said.
SEAHAWKS STAR DELIVERS 2-WORD MESSAGE TO CRITICS IN WILD SUPER BOWL PARADE SPEECH
“I made sure all the coaches had asthma pumps and rescue inhalers, and I gave one to the coaches, the trainers, I kept one, to make sure that if anyone needed to reach for him, they had what they needed…And as he progressed, I felt more and more comfortable.”
The faith in letting him play football paid off when Hall received his first college scholarship offer when he was just in eighth grade, his mother said.
Hall became a standout linebacker at Gulfport High School in Mississippi, going from a touted four-star prospect to a dominant All-SEC rusher at Auburn University.
But even after coming this far since his premature birth, he still had a moment where he feared for his life in college.
“I got scared at the university where I was going to practice that morning and I wasn’t feeling very good, and the next day I got up to go to the bathroom and I couldn’t take two steps without getting out of breath,” Hall said. “We got to the hospital and the doctor said, we’re glad you brought him because if you had waited another hour he probably would have been in really bad shape.”
It was a turning point in how he approached his own limitations. But he did not shy away from his passion as a footballer and remained faithful to his faith.
Hall finished his Auburn career with 147 tackles, 19.5 sacks and 29.5 tackles for loss in 40 games. A highly touted recruit, Hall has become a dominant starter in the SEC, earning first-team All-SEC honors in 2022 as a team captain, known for his elite power, speed and high motor.
This earned him the chance to tell his extraordinary story to the NFL as he became the 37th pick in the 2023 NFL Draft.
But 2025 didn’t turn out the way Derrick Hall hoped, at least in terms of individual stats early on. For much of the year, the numbers did not match the efforts made. He was getting pressure, getting hits, doing work that didn’t always make the headlines, but the sacks weren’t coming.
“I was getting regular hits… I was getting pressured,” Hall said. “But I can’t get fired…I say to myself, Lord, whatever you have planned, let it come to light.”
Statistically, this frustration was real. Hall finished the regular season with just two sacks in 14 games, contributing more as a rotational presence than as a pass rusher. But within Seattle’s defense — a unit built on balance, depth and constant pressure — his role still mattered. The Seahawks relied on a collective pass rush rather than a dominant star, finishing the season as one of the league’s most effective defensive fronts.
And then, almost suddenly, everything changed.
On football’s biggest stage, in Super Bowl LX against the Patriots, Hall delivered the kind of performance that reshapes a career. He recorded two sacks and a forced fumble, including a strip sack that helped open the game and set the tone for Seattle’s 29-13 victory. That single play – breaking through the offensive line, dropping the ball and creating a turnover – became one of the defining moments of the game.
To Hall, it didn’t seem like a coincidence. It felt like it was timing.
“I got to the Super Bowl and I got the two bags, and I’m like, man, there’s no time like God’s time,” he said. “It’s true, man.”
In a season where he had spent months waiting for production to match his efforts, the breakthrough came when it mattered most.
“Mentally it was tough this year,” he said. “But like I said, it’s a blessing.”
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PK Press Club APP
After the game, the numbers told a story: two sacks, a forced fumble, a championship. But for Hall, the meaning ran deeper, tied to something much bigger than a stat sheet.
“You can’t tell me that a kid with a 1 percent chance of living… ends up being a Super Bowl champion one day without the Lord being in his life,” he said. “That’s a miracle in itself.”
Today, Hall and her mother are connecting that story back to where it started – the neonatal intensive care unit – through a partnership with Huggies and its “Natural Born Fighters” campaign, which highlights premature babies and the care they receive during those first, most fragile days. The campaign aims to support NICU infants with products designed in collaboration with nurses and doctors to meet their specific needs.
For Stacy, the partnership is rooted in memories that remain dear to her.
“Both of my kids wore Huggies,” she said. “And I actually had one of their very first diapers… but now you have to think, that was 25 years ago, think about all the designs they’ve made now… working with the NICU nurses and doctors to develop a diaper specifically for NICU babies, that to me represents the best fight anyone could ever have for a brand that wants to make sure NICU babies have the best opportunities at the very beginning of their fight.”
