Linebacker Derick Hall can call himself a Super Bowl champion. But it almost didn’t happen. Not because he didn’t make the roster cut, but because he almost didn’t make it through life.

It’s a true fairy tale written by the NFL.

When Derick Hall was born, doctors gave him only a one percent chance of survival. Twenty-five years later, the Seattle Seahawks linebacker stands on the field as a Super Bowl winner.

Derick Hall was born in March 2001 as an extremely premature baby at 23 weeks gestation—almost four months early and without a heartbeat. He weighed only about 1.16 kilograms at birth. The doctors resuscitated the child but warned his mother, Stacy Gooden-Crandle, that even if he survived, he would likely remain in a permanent vegetative state.

Mother fought for her son: “I had to give him a chance”

She refused to give up on her son. “I had to give him a chance to live. A chance to become someone who could change the world,” she said later.

Hall spent the first five months of his life in intensive care, connected to ventilators and tubes. He suffered a severe brain hemorrhage and struggled with an extremely weakened immune system. After being discharged from the hospital, life remained challenging for the family: constant hospital stays, isolation, and worries about whether the little boy would ever be able to lead a normal life.

At the age of four, doctors recommended flag football to improve his lung function. The therapeutic measure quickly became a passion. “Whatever it took, I did it,” Hall later recalled.

Football gave him the feeling of being a normal child. It became the springboard for an extraordinary career.

Seattle Seahawks: Hall as a pillar of Super Bowl victory

Hall made the leap to the NFL in 2023 via Auburn University. The Seattle Seahawks drafted him in the second round. In the 2025 season, he established himself as a reliable linebacker and edge rusher. In Super Bowl LX against the New England Patriots, he delivered a strong performance and contributed significantly to the Seahawks franchise’s second Super Bowl title with a forced fumble.
Hall himself sums up his story time and again: “They gave me a one percent chance of survival. The doctors had written me off, but my mother didn’t.” He continues: “Only one percent of people make it to the NFL—and I had a one percent chance of survival. That’s the definition of beating the odds.”

The linebacker has turned his story into a mission and founded the One Percent Foundation, which supports premature babies and their families.