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'Miracle child' Mitchell Agude vying for spot with Detroit Lions years after accident
Dave Birkett
Detroit Free Press
Paywall Freep article.
Grace Agude still doesn’t know how she got to the hospital.
Agude was with a client, supervising a new nurse for her home healthcare business, when she got a call from her husband, Sunday, that the youngest of the couple’s five children, Mitchell, had hurt his head in a skateboarding accident.
Mitchell was 8 at the time, in an ambulance on his way to the trauma center at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California. Grace was frantic. She hopped in her car and called 9-1-1, running red lights on her way to the emergency room. When she got there, a doctor pulled her aside and told her Mitchell was in a coma with swelling on his brain and to expect the worst.
Mitchell Agude at 11 years of age.jpg
“He said 'I want you to prepare for your life changing, because this is it,” Grace recalled. “ 'He’s not going to come out of this. He’s going to be a vegetable for life.' ”
An intensive care unit nurse before she became a business owner, Grace watched doctors cut Mitchell’s shorts so they could put a warming blanket on his cold body.
Her pastor joined her at the hospital, as did a prayer group from her church. She prayed in the ICU and in the privacy of a bathroom, and to this day she only has one explanation for what happened next.
Mitchell Agude awoke from his coma with no signs of the trauma that doctors feared would end his life.
He spent three days in the hospital, walked out under his own power and, roughly 17 years later, will play his third preseason game with the Detroit Lions against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Saturday, as he fights for a spot as a backup pass rusher on the 53-man roster.
“When it happened I couldn’t have even imagined that we’re talking about life and talking about football,” Grace said Thursday. “You can only see that when you believe in miracles and that’s just a miracle for us. My husband calls him a miracle child.”
A birthday gift
Mitchell Agude still remembers what happened that day. Not the hospital part; he has no recollection of that. But he knows he went to a skate park with a friend and fell backwards with no helmet on as he tried to drop down a pike.
“We played like ‘Skate 2’ or something like that, just the video game, and he was a skater so I was like, ‘I’ll try it,’ not thinking it was hard, just thinking it was a video game-type thing,” Mitchell told the Free Press this spring. “So I took my turn, fell down, hit my head and then … Yeah, went down that, thinking (expletive) was sweet, and (expletive) was not sweet. (Expletive) was not sweet.”
Mitchell Agude and his mother Grace Agude.jpg
Mitchell said his memory is blank from the moment he hit his head until he left the hospital three days later, but Grace remembers her son being intubated, doctors giving him IVs to try to reduce the swelling on his brain and telling her she needed to talk to a social worker to prepare for the next steps.
“Whenever anybody asks me about him, I always cry because it’s too emotional,” she said. “I couldn’t even explain it to anybody, except anybody who is a believer that knows that God can do and undo because (a doctor) telling somebody that their child is going to be a vegetable, came out three days later, nothing. No residual. Nothing. Here today. Still today. Not even a headache, not even anything.”
Mitchell said he had to go for regular CT scans and MRIs in the years following the accident, and his parents wouldn’t let him play contact sports.
Mitchell’s older brother, Nnamdi, started playing high school football around that time, and Mitchell watched with envy, wanting to try the sport himself.
“I would sneak outside — after school, middle school, right, I would go to the park, cause all my friends was at the park and I just wanted to be a regular kid cause that’s how I felt,” Mitchell said. “So like I would go to the park and all I hear is, ‘Mitchell,’ just yelling and then I see my mom running, like, ‘No, I’m just trying to play.’ So after like a year or two went by and she was like, ‘OK.’ I was like, ‘I just want to be a kid,’ so she allowed it.”
Mitchell actually snuck his way onto his first football team around the time he was 13, when he asked his older sisters to sign the permission slip he needed to play.
His mom found his football bag a few weeks later, and he copped to playing the sport behind her back.
“This is what he has been wanting to do, just like his brother,” Grace said. “So I said, ‘OK, since you’ve been doing it without me knowing, go ahead and now you can play. You can just play.’ Because if I keep on denying him the opportunity to do what he wanted to do, then who knows? But I didn’t want to stop him anymore. I said, ‘OK, fine, you can play.’ That was my 13 years gift for his birthday.”
Mitchell Agude 5-10-2024.jpg
‘Being alive is enough’
For Mitchell, that’s turned out to be the best gift he could have asked for.
He signed to play football at Riverside City College out of high school and spent two seasons at UCLA before finishing his college career at Miami.
Last year, he joined the Miami Dolphins as an undrafted free agent in the spring and was waived as part of final roster cuts at the end of the preseason before signing to the Lions’ practice squad in September. After a season of sharpening his pass-rush moves against All-Pro right tackle Penei Sewell in practice, Agude had an impressive spring and has continued his strong play with four tackles in each of the Lions’ first two preseason games this summer.
“I see growth,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said. “We like Mitch. Mitch, he's another guy, just busts his rear, he gives you everything he's got out there, and he's got some rush ability.”
A natural defensive end, Agude played some strong-side linebacker this offseason and in training camp as the Lions try and figure out how he can impact their roster.
Aidan Hutchinson and Marcus Davenport are expected to start at the edge-rush positions this fall with Derrick Barnes playing strong-side linebacker in three-linebacker sets. Agude is competing for one or two backup spots with the likes of James Houston, Isaac Ukwu and Mathieu Betts.
Campbell said Agude has “made the most of” his time at strong-side linebacker, which comes as little surprise to his mother after all he’s been through.
“The story of Mitchell is a story that needs to be on the archives because I’m telling you, Mitchell is alive today,” Grace said. “He always tells me, ‘Mom, being alive is enough for me,’ because they already said he’s going to be a vegetable for life.”
Mitchell said he believes “there’s a purpose for my life” after making it through his accident healthy.
He returned with his mother to her native Nigeria to take part in mission trips during his high school and college years, and he said he’s blessed to have traveled the road he did, from starting football late because of the accident, to going undrafted and spending last year on practice squad with the Lions.
“I think it’s written perfectly, honestly,” he said. “Like I wouldn’t change anything. Honestly, I would want to be drafted, but I can feel — I can feel the story being written perfectly, how it should be. So I think I just have high hopes for what’s to come.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on X and Instagram at @davebirkett.
Dave Birkett
Detroit Free Press
Paywall Freep article.
Grace Agude still doesn’t know how she got to the hospital.
Agude was with a client, supervising a new nurse for her home healthcare business, when she got a call from her husband, Sunday, that the youngest of the couple’s five children, Mitchell, had hurt his head in a skateboarding accident.
Mitchell was 8 at the time, in an ambulance on his way to the trauma center at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California. Grace was frantic. She hopped in her car and called 9-1-1, running red lights on her way to the emergency room. When she got there, a doctor pulled her aside and told her Mitchell was in a coma with swelling on his brain and to expect the worst.
Mitchell Agude at 11 years of age.jpg
“He said 'I want you to prepare for your life changing, because this is it,” Grace recalled. “ 'He’s not going to come out of this. He’s going to be a vegetable for life.' ”
An intensive care unit nurse before she became a business owner, Grace watched doctors cut Mitchell’s shorts so they could put a warming blanket on his cold body.
Her pastor joined her at the hospital, as did a prayer group from her church. She prayed in the ICU and in the privacy of a bathroom, and to this day she only has one explanation for what happened next.
Mitchell Agude awoke from his coma with no signs of the trauma that doctors feared would end his life.
He spent three days in the hospital, walked out under his own power and, roughly 17 years later, will play his third preseason game with the Detroit Lions against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Saturday, as he fights for a spot as a backup pass rusher on the 53-man roster.
“When it happened I couldn’t have even imagined that we’re talking about life and talking about football,” Grace said Thursday. “You can only see that when you believe in miracles and that’s just a miracle for us. My husband calls him a miracle child.”
A birthday gift
Mitchell Agude still remembers what happened that day. Not the hospital part; he has no recollection of that. But he knows he went to a skate park with a friend and fell backwards with no helmet on as he tried to drop down a pike.
“We played like ‘Skate 2’ or something like that, just the video game, and he was a skater so I was like, ‘I’ll try it,’ not thinking it was hard, just thinking it was a video game-type thing,” Mitchell told the Free Press this spring. “So I took my turn, fell down, hit my head and then … Yeah, went down that, thinking (expletive) was sweet, and (expletive) was not sweet. (Expletive) was not sweet.”
Mitchell Agude and his mother Grace Agude.jpg
Mitchell said his memory is blank from the moment he hit his head until he left the hospital three days later, but Grace remembers her son being intubated, doctors giving him IVs to try to reduce the swelling on his brain and telling her she needed to talk to a social worker to prepare for the next steps.
“Whenever anybody asks me about him, I always cry because it’s too emotional,” she said. “I couldn’t even explain it to anybody, except anybody who is a believer that knows that God can do and undo because (a doctor) telling somebody that their child is going to be a vegetable, came out three days later, nothing. No residual. Nothing. Here today. Still today. Not even a headache, not even anything.”
Mitchell said he had to go for regular CT scans and MRIs in the years following the accident, and his parents wouldn’t let him play contact sports.
Mitchell’s older brother, Nnamdi, started playing high school football around that time, and Mitchell watched with envy, wanting to try the sport himself.
“I would sneak outside — after school, middle school, right, I would go to the park, cause all my friends was at the park and I just wanted to be a regular kid cause that’s how I felt,” Mitchell said. “So like I would go to the park and all I hear is, ‘Mitchell,’ just yelling and then I see my mom running, like, ‘No, I’m just trying to play.’ So after like a year or two went by and she was like, ‘OK.’ I was like, ‘I just want to be a kid,’ so she allowed it.”
Mitchell actually snuck his way onto his first football team around the time he was 13, when he asked his older sisters to sign the permission slip he needed to play.
His mom found his football bag a few weeks later, and he copped to playing the sport behind her back.
“This is what he has been wanting to do, just like his brother,” Grace said. “So I said, ‘OK, since you’ve been doing it without me knowing, go ahead and now you can play. You can just play.’ Because if I keep on denying him the opportunity to do what he wanted to do, then who knows? But I didn’t want to stop him anymore. I said, ‘OK, fine, you can play.’ That was my 13 years gift for his birthday.”
Mitchell Agude 5-10-2024.jpg
‘Being alive is enough’
For Mitchell, that’s turned out to be the best gift he could have asked for.
He signed to play football at Riverside City College out of high school and spent two seasons at UCLA before finishing his college career at Miami.
Last year, he joined the Miami Dolphins as an undrafted free agent in the spring and was waived as part of final roster cuts at the end of the preseason before signing to the Lions’ practice squad in September. After a season of sharpening his pass-rush moves against All-Pro right tackle Penei Sewell in practice, Agude had an impressive spring and has continued his strong play with four tackles in each of the Lions’ first two preseason games this summer.
“I see growth,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said. “We like Mitch. Mitch, he's another guy, just busts his rear, he gives you everything he's got out there, and he's got some rush ability.”
A natural defensive end, Agude played some strong-side linebacker this offseason and in training camp as the Lions try and figure out how he can impact their roster.
Aidan Hutchinson and Marcus Davenport are expected to start at the edge-rush positions this fall with Derrick Barnes playing strong-side linebacker in three-linebacker sets. Agude is competing for one or two backup spots with the likes of James Houston, Isaac Ukwu and Mathieu Betts.
Campbell said Agude has “made the most of” his time at strong-side linebacker, which comes as little surprise to his mother after all he’s been through.
“The story of Mitchell is a story that needs to be on the archives because I’m telling you, Mitchell is alive today,” Grace said. “He always tells me, ‘Mom, being alive is enough for me,’ because they already said he’s going to be a vegetable for life.”
Mitchell said he believes “there’s a purpose for my life” after making it through his accident healthy.
He returned with his mother to her native Nigeria to take part in mission trips during his high school and college years, and he said he’s blessed to have traveled the road he did, from starting football late because of the accident, to going undrafted and spending last year on practice squad with the Lions.
“I think it’s written perfectly, honestly,” he said. “Like I wouldn’t change anything. Honestly, I would want to be drafted, but I can feel — I can feel the story being written perfectly, how it should be. So I think I just have high hopes for what’s to come.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on X and Instagram at @davebirkett.
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