Seattle Seahawks linebacker Derick Hall left his mark on NFL history when he came up with a game-tying streak sack in the Super Bowl against the New England Patriots in February.
There is a low percentage probability that any footballer will have a moment like that in his career. But Hall had to beat much greater odds. Hall had a 1% chance of survival as he was born four months premature at just 23 weeks gestation, born without a heartbeat and suffering from a brain haemorrhage.
“I wasn’t born … pulling,” he told Pakinomist Digital. “I was born dead.
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Derick Hall of the Seattle Seahawks strip sacks Drake Maye of the New England Patriots during the third quarter of NFL Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., 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, scared,” she said of her feelings in the days following her son’s premature birth. “But… those weren’t the emotions I felt during Derrick’s birth. I just trusted God to fix everything.”
That belief became the center of how the family made sense of everything that followed.
“That’s probably the main thing we share,” Gooden-Crandle said of their religion.
“We are people of faith and have been for most of my life. I came to church when I was 16 years old and I just grew up a woman of faith. I have 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 that environment gave meaning to struggles he did not yet understand.
“It was huge. It was amazing because I never really understood why me or why my family had to go through what I went through,” Hall said.
Derick Hall of the Seattle Seahawks watches from the sideline during the national anthem before an NFL game against the Atlanta Falcons at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Ga., on Dec. 7, 2025. (Perry Knotts/Getty Images)
“My pastor always told me, you weren’t dying for this, you’re blessed to be in this position and God has something bigger for you, and I think that helped me feel comfortable with the situation and the things that me and my family endured over time.
“I always speak for my faith because obviously I’m a miracle child and I’m not saying I’m doing well, I’m saying I’m blessed, I can’t complain, I’m above the earth and I’m blessed… You can’t tell me that a child with a one percent chance of living and not going to walk, not going to talk, not even going to be alive for a Super Day, is going to end up being a Super Day. Their life.”
Even after surviving childhood, the challenges did not go away and his childhood looked very different from other children.
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“My most difficult period was from about age four or five to about age 12 or 13,” Hall said. “I could go out and play but it was only for about five minutes at a time and I would have to sit down for an hour just to allow my body and my lungs to catch up again and to this day my lungs are still underdeveloped, they always will be, they will always be three years behind.”
These boundaries extended into almost every part of his life, including the seasons when other children were outside and playing freely.
But through it all, Hall discovered football, and his condition would not deter him from the game that would define his life.
Derick Hall of the Seattle Seahawks holds the Vince Lombardi Trophy on stage with his 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 football at the age of four because I was trying to develop my body and get to the point where I was able to do things and I fell in love with it because it was the first thing I was able to do to make me feel like a normal kid,” he said.
For his mother, that moment came with a difficult decision about 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 take that leap to allow him to play tackle football when we were still seeing a neurologist every six months for a brain bleed, that was a difficult decision,” she said.
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“I made sure all the coaches had asthma pumps and rescue inhalers, and I gave one to the coaches, the coaches, I kept one to make sure that if someone went to him, they had what he needed. . . . And as he progressed, I got more and more comfortable.”
The belief in letting him play football paid off when Hall received his first college scholarship when he was just in eighth grade, his mother said.
Hall went on to be a standout linebacker at Gulfport High School in Mississippi, rising from a touted four-star prospect to a dominant All-SEC edge rusher at Auburn University.
But even after coming all that way from his premature birth, he still had a moment where he feared for his life in college.
“I had a scare in college where I went to practice that morning and I didn’t feel so good, and the next day I got up to go to the bathroom and I couldn’t take two steps without gasping for air,” Hall said. “We got to the hospital and the doctor said we’re glad you brought him because if you would have waited another hour he probably would have been in very bad shape.”
It was a turning point in how he approached his own limits. But he did not shy away from his passion as a footballer and remained committed to his faith.
Hall finished his career at Auburn with 147 tackles, 19.5 sacks and 29.5 tackles for loss in 40 games. A highly touted recruit, Hall developed into a dominant SEC starter who earned first-team All-SEC honors as a team captain in 2022, known for his elite strength, speed and high motor skills.
That gave him a chance to take his extraordinary story to the NFL as he became the 37th pick in the 2023 NFL Draft.
But 2025 didn’t pan out the way Derrick Hall expected, at least in terms of his individual stats at first. For most of the year, the numbers did not match the effort. He got pressure, got hits, did the work that doesn’t always make the headlines, but the sacks didn’t come.
“I was constantly getting hits … I was getting pressure,” Hall said. “But I can’t get the sack… I’m like, Lord, whatever you have planned, let it unfold.”
Statistically, that frustration was real. Hall finished the regular season with just two sacks across 14 games, contributing more as a rotating edge presence than a headline pass rusher. But within Seattle’s defense—a unit built on balance, depth and consistent pressure—his role still mattered. Leaning on a collective pass rush rather than a dominant star, the Seahawks finished the season as one of the league’s more efficient defensive fronts.
And then, almost at once, everything changed.
On the biggest stage in football, in Super Bowl LX against the Patriots, Hall delivered the kind of career-changing performance. He recorded two sacks and a forced fumble, including a strip sack that helped break open the game and set the tone for Seattle’s 29-13 victory. That single play – driving through the offensive line, knocking the ball loose and creating a turnover – became one of the defining moments of the game.
To Hall, it didn’t feel like a coincidence. It felt like timing.
“I made that Super Bowl and I got both sacks and I’m like, man, ain’t no time like God’s time,” he said. “It’s true, man.”
In a season where he had spent months waiting for the production to match the effort, the breakthrough came when it mattered most.
“Mentally it was tough this year,” he said. “But like I said, it’s a blessing.”
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After the game, the numbers told one story: two sacks, one forced fumble, one championship. But for Hall, the meaning went deeper, tied back to something far greater than a stat sheet.
“You can’t tell me that a kid with a one percent chance of living … ends up being a Super Bowl champion one day without the Lord being in their life,” he said. “That’s a miracle in itself.”
Now, Hall and his mother are tying that story back to where it began — 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 in their earliest, most fragile days. The campaign focuses on supporting NICU infants with products designed with nurses and doctors to meet their specific needs.
For Stacy, the partnership is rooted in memories that she still holds close.
“Both of my kids actually wore Huggies,” she said. “And I actually had one of their very first diapers…but now you have to think, it’s been 25 years, think of all the designs they’ve done now…working with the NICU nurses and doctors to develop a diaper specifically for NICU babies, which to me is the best match you could ever want for a brand that wants to ensure the very best opportunities for NICU babies.”
