RENTON, Wash. — Every game Stacy Gooden-Crandle watches her son, Derick Hall, play, there are moments it all comes rushing back.

Being told Derick had a one percent chance to live after he was born 23-and-a-half weeks premature, considered a "micro preemie," weighing just 2 pounds, 9 ounces. Having arrived, in her words, "without a heartbeat and considered dead at birth."

The hospital handing her a do-not-resuscitate form, a request she quickly refused.

Watching, waiting and worrying as Derick spent the next five months in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit while also battling bleeding on the brain and jaundice.

Later guiding Derick through myriad health issues including asthma and undeveloped lungs, necessitating countless visits to doctors.

Marveling as he persevered to become a three-sport star at Gulfport (Miss.) High, a star edge rusher and team captain at Auburn, and finally, a second-round pick of the Seattle Seahawks in 2023.

As she has been every step of the way, Gooden-Crandle was there at Lumen Field as Derick Hall had his best NFL game yet, making two sacks to key a 24-3 win over the Miami Dolphins, continuing what has been a breakout season in his second year with the Seahawks.

"I sit in awe sometimes in the stadium like 'I just can't believe this is our life,'" she said in a phone interview this week. "... And just to see him on the field and to know where he come from and to know all the adversity that he faced to get to that point and the grit and the hard work and the dedication that he had just to be great. Sometimes I just sit in the stadium and I'm like 'God, how did we get so blessed?'"

It's a journey she now gladly shares whenever asked, having decided to use her son's growing platform as a football player to bring light to the challenges of premature childbirth, as well as food-insecurity issues and youth and fitness, pet causes of Derick's.

The website of his foundation, Derick Hall One Percent Foundation — named after the odds of survival Derick was given at birth — includes a photo of Hall in the NICU at Gulfport (Miss.) Hospital at 2 weeks old.

Such photos were not shown to Derick for years, with Gooden-Crandle saying she never really told him the entire story of his physical challenges until he was in college.

"I did that intentionally because I never really wanted him to rest on his laurels or to use this as a cop out," she said.

It was not something Hall talked much about publicly until his years at Auburn as he was nearing the NFL draft when the family realized there was much good that could come from telling his story.

"When she showed me those pictures I was like, 'That's me?' and her response was 'yes,' and I was like, 'There is no way,'" he said this week in the Seahawks locker room. "But it's a heartfelt moment obviously. I try not to think about it as much as I can because it's still very emotional for me and obviously my family. I don't think that's something that will ever get old. But just being able to be here after going through all that and defying the odds at that point in my life and being able to make it to the NFL. A lot of guys really don't have this opportunity to get here and accomplish that."

Gooden-Crandle was eight days shy of her 27th birthday when Derick Hall was born.

She had had two previous pregnancies — one a miscarriage at 19 weeks and then a daughter, R'hana, born at 27-and-a-half weeks.

Her pregnancy with Derick had seemed normal until he suddenly arrived.

It was eventually determined Gooden-Crandle had an incompetent cervix, generally considered to affect 1-2% of pregnancies. She had no more children after Derick.

In the moments after Derick was born, Gooden-Crandle said she was handed a form that stated "however the baby was born that was the condition that the baby would stay. So it was basically a form that the hospital did not have to perform any life-sustaining, life-saving methods to make sure that Derick could live. We elected not to sign the form, so Derick was placed on life support."

Hall stayed there for roughly five days until he started to show signs of recovering and breathing on his own, and then transferred to NICU.

"He was just a fighter," she recalls. "He just made daily strides, like every day there was a small improvement, every day we saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I would say probably at the three-month mark we kind of knew that, 'OK, he is out of the woods.' But he still had bleeding in the brain, still had to have CT scans and MRIs, and we had to do that every six months up until he was 6 years old, and then it went to annually until he was about 13."

There were also challenges with asthma and underdeveloped lungs.

But eventually, Derick was running around like every other kid. And even during the challenging early days, there were signs of what was to come.

"He was a pretty big kid, even at birth — he was 23-and-a-half inches long, so like the doctors were thinking, 'This kid is going to be massive,'" Gooden-Crandle recalls. "He had massive hands, massive feet. He was tiny, like I could put his body in the palm of my hand. But his legs and his arms just kind of dangled so he was such a long kid."

By 4 years old he was "very rambunctious," she says.

A friend suggested flag football as an outlet. And coming from a family of athletes — Gooden-Crandle's brother, Kevin Gooden, played basketball at Delta State — Derick had already taken to the game.

At age 6 he wanted to play tackle football. Doctors gave him a physical and said there was no reason he couldn't, though he had a specially-fitted helmet, and coaches were equipped with inhalers in case of asthma attacks.

"It was just a way to get out and do something and kind of have that normality and feeling like a child again," Hall recalled this week.

As Hall grew — he's now listed at 6-foot-3, 260 pounds — so did his athletic exploits. He played basketball and was a state finalist in the 200 meters as a senior at Gulfport High, running a 22.12 while also doing the hurdles and long jumping 21 feet, 10.5 inches.

While he will always have underdeveloped lungs, he says he hasn't had any issues with asthma since his college days.

And through the years, he's become more comfortable with sharing the challenging path he took to the NFL.

"It's something I never really talked about or never really wanted to talk about," he said. "[But] with my mom and my family when we got to the draft it was something we started talking about and wanted to share because it would help others. There are a lot of families that go through having babies that are premature and having to deal with that for the younger part of their lives. So being able to go through that and knowing I can use my story to help impact others is a huge, huge thing that I am very happy and proud about."

His platform figures to only grow larger if he keeps playing as he has.

His three sacks are tied for the most with the Seahawks, and he ranks 12th in the NFL in pressure rate, according to Pro Football Focus.

Hall credits having a year under his belt and understanding he can't just get away with athleticism in the NFL the way he did in college, as well as a revamped offseason training program that included regular sparring practice to help with his handwork.

A game against an explosive Lions team in Detroit on a Monday night, though, will provide the stiffest test yet for Hall and a Seattle defense that will have to play without four key players on the front seven.

As she has been throughout, Gooden-Crandle planned to be in attendance at Ford Field to share in the latest step in her son's story.

"Just to see my son being a household name and to see him on television playing the game he loves, man, I just sometimes have to pinch myself," she said.

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