(The Lion) — Seattle Seahawks linebacker Derick Hall played a key role in Super Bowl LX, helping his team beat the New England Patriots 29-13.

It was one of the biggest moments of his life – a life that began with doctors warning his family he would not survive.

Hall was born at just 23 weeks in Gulfport, Mississippi. He weighed barely more than a pound and was given a 1% chance to live. Doctors advised ending life support shortly after birth.

“He was born dead,” his mother, Stacey Gooden-Crandle, said in an NFL documentary. “It was a battle. I had to fight every day for my son because I felt like the doctors weren’t fighting for him.”

Hall spent months in the neonatal intensive care unit and suffered bleeding in his brain.

“They wanted me to sign a form to take him off life support,” Gooden-Crandle said. “They didn’t expect him to live. They said he wouldn’t have a quality of life.”

She refused and leaned on her faith.

“Even though I trusted God and I knew that He could do anything but fail, I was scared,” she said.

His grandmother, Bobbi Brown, recalled a moment she believes showed he would survive.

“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,” Brown said.

Hall reportedly grew up with asthma and lung weakness.

“Most kids could run all day,” Hall said. “That’s just something I didn’t have the lung capacity to do.

“Football became my way of escape,” he added.

In college, Hall donated his name, image and likeness earnings during the Jackson water crisis to provide emergency supplies.

Mississippi State Rep. Jeffrey Hulum III, D-Gulfport, praised the effort.

“This young man made sure those supplies reached people in need,” Hulum said.

Brown said Hall’s life shows what can be lost when people abandon hope.

“Just think if we had decided not to have him,” she said. “Look what we would have missed.”

On Sunday, Hall, who is listed at 6’3” and 254 pounds, recorded a strip sack late in the third quarter, setting up a scoring drive for the Seahawks.

After the win, Hall described the moment as a blessing.