Sometimes God writes a story so good, Hollywood wouldn’t dare make it up. They’d say it was too unbelievable.
Derick Hall came into this world four months early — just 23 weeks. He weighed 2 pounds, 9 ounces. He had no heartbeat. Doctors told his mother, Stacy Gooden-Crandle, that her baby had a 1% chance of making it through the night.
They handed her a Do Not Resuscitate form.
She refused to sign it.
“We decided we wanted to fight for him,” Stacy said. “I had to give him a chance.”
That tiny baby spent five months in the NICU at Memorial Hospital in Gulfport, Mississippi. Doctors warned he might never walk. Never talk. Never live anything close to a normal life.
Last Sunday, that same baby — now 6 foot 3 and 250 pounds — recorded a crucial strip sack on New England quarterback Drake Maye that broke open Super Bowl LX. The Seattle Seahawks won 29-13. Derick Hall is a world champion.
Let that sink in.
A Mother’s Faith
This isn’t just a football story. It’s a family story. A faith story.
Stacy worked full-time and attended school at night while caring for her medically fragile son. Derick spent years in speech therapy and physical therapy, fighting to catch up with other kids. His grandmother, Bobbi Brown, remembers the moment she knew he’d make it.
“The first time I knew he was going to make it was when I stuck my hand in the incubator, and he grabbed it and held on,” she said. “We knew then that Derick was going to pull through.”
That grip never loosened.
Moreover, his family credits faith and perseverance for his survival. “It was all family. All hands on deck,” Brown recalled. Relatives rallied around the fragile infant, providing constant care and encouragement while Stacy balanced raising Hall with working and attending school to support her son’s medical needs.
Football Became His Escape
Growing up, Derick struggled with being different. The therapies. The limitations. The questions.
“I just wanted to be a regular kid,” he recalled. “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.”
He became a standout at Gulfport High School in Mississippi, then earned a scholarship to play for Auburn University. In 2023, the Seahawks drafted him in the second round. Two years later, he’s a Super Bowl champion with a game-sealing play on the biggest stage in American sports.
After the win, Hall kept using the same word: blessed.
“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,” he said. “It’s been a crazy year. The pressures and hits have been there, but no sacks — and what a more rewarding time to be blessed and have opportunities to help lead this team to success tonight.”
Giving Back
Hall hasn’t forgotten where he came from. He founded the Derick Hall One Percent Foundation to support families with premature babies — parents facing the same impossible odds his mother once faced.
He provides Thanksgiving meals for families in need. He runs youth fitness programs. He visits hospitals.
“Naturally, Derick gets his desire to give back from his mother,” the foundation states. “Growing up, he witnessed firsthand her strength and tenacity.”
His teammate Byron Murphy II recently had a premature daughter. Hall immediately sent him pictures of himself as a newborn — tubes everywhere, barely clinging to life — to remind Murphy that miracles happen.
“You don’t know what that next phone call’s going to be and how everything’s going to turn out,” Hall told him. “To be able to have faith and prayer and everybody just being able to love up on him… I’m just so blessed to be in this position.”
Murphy’s daughter pulled through. He now has a Super Bowl ring and a healthy baby girl.
“Seeing my daughter come out as a preemie, weighing 2 pounds, tubes running all through here and everything, to see how far she came now, it’s a blessing,” Murphy said. “But the main thing it taught me was always keep going. No matter what, fight.”
What This Means
A 1% chance.
That’s what the world gave Derick Hall. That’s what the experts calculated. That’s what the forms said.
But God and a praying mother had other plans.
Derick Hall’s life is proof that the odds don’t matter when heaven gets involved. That a mother’s faith can move mountains. That the child everyone counted out might just end up holding a championship trophy.
His grandmother was right. That baby grabbed on and never let go.
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” — Jeremiah 29:11 (ESV)