From Premature Birth To Super Bowl Champion.
When Derick Hall was born four months premature in Gulfport, Mississippi, doctors pronounced him dead and told his mother, Stacy Gooden-Crandle, to allow life support to be discontinued, believing he would likely remain in a permanent vegetative state. She refused. Hall was resuscitated, spent five months in the neonatal intensive care unit, survived frequent hospitalizations and severe asthma throughout his childhood, and began playing flag football at age four specifically to build his lung capacity so he could run around with other kids. On February 8, 2026, Hall lifted the Vince Lombardi Trophy as a Super Bowl champion after recording two sacks and creating the decisive fumble in the Seattle Seahawks' 29 to 13 victory over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX, becoming one of the most remarkable stories in the history of American sports. Hall weighed 2 pounds, 9 ounces at birth. The trophy he held on the field afterward weighed seven pounds.
After the game, Hall found his mother in the crowd for an emotional embrace, telling reporters that she is the unsung warrior of this whole process and that she never gave up on him once. The NICU that saved his life back in Gulfport printed up flyers during Super Bowl week that read Good luck, Derick Hall and the Seattle Seahawks, and staff gathered to watch him play. Hall, who has since partnered with Huggies on a campaign celebrating NICU fighters and created the Derick Hall One Percent Foundation to support premature babies and their families, said he started playing football just to get his lung capacity up and fell in love with the game because it was the first thing that made him feel like a normal kid. He told reporters after the game that he thought about everything it took for him just to be alive and to have a chance, and that the only words he had were all glory to God. His mother, who attended every single game from his first flag football practice at age four to the night he became a champion, was there too, and she was not letting go.
