BIRMINGHAM (June 7, 2025) – For the first 10 years of Keaton Sutherland’s life, everything felt picture-perfect. He played football, basketball, and baseball with his friends, went to school, and enjoyed the kind of carefree childhood every kid deserves.
Until the night everything changed.
At baseball practice, a long toss sailed into the lights — and out of sight. In a split second, it struck him in the face.
“The next thing I know, I wake up with my coach running to me,” Sutherland said. “I grab my face and see blood all over my hands.”
An emergency room visit turned into weeks of medical appointments. At first, doctors feared he might lose his eye — and with it, his ability to play sports. For a 10-year-old who lived for competition, it was devastating.
“Right away, I mean, I’m freaking out. My parents are freaking out,” he said.
Then came a turning point. A visit with a retinal specialist brought hope — and a path forward.
“He said, ‘You can still be a kid. You’ll just have to wear protection and be extra cautious — you only have one good eye now. You can’t afford to lose the other one,’” Sutherland recalled.
So that’s what Sutherland did. He lived carefully — but never cautiously. He kept playing, kept growing. By high school, Sutherland was a heavily recruited offensive lineman at Edward S. Marcus High School in Texas.
Sutherland was always open with coaches about his eye condition. But the coaches used their own eye test to evaluate him — the kind that matters in football.
“I would always tell them about my eye,” he said, “They’d always say, ‘Well, we watched your film. It seems like you block people no problem, so we have no issue with it.’”
Sutherland earned a starting role as a true freshman at Texas A&M and turned it into a standout college career. The NFL came calling, and over time, he spent stints with seven different teams. Most recently, he joined the Jacksonville Jaguars’ practice squad before being waived and signing with the Birmingham Stallions of the UFL.
Now with the Stallions reaching the USFL Conference Championship Game (Sunday, 3 p.m. ET, ABC), Sutherland is still playing at a high level. But despite the team’s success, the most meaningful moment for him didn’t come on the field.
It came when he met two players from the Alabama School for the Blind — young athletes who, like him, were chasing their football dreams with limited vision.
Sutherland had long since stopped thinking his story was anything special, but that meeting changed his perspective.
“They were just saying, ‘I can’t believe this is happening right now, that I’m getting to meet you,’” he said. “Seeing the impact it had on them — being able to influence others like that — it really made me stop and think. Like, wow. Look at this opportunity God’s given me to affect people.”
That opportunity, and the purpose he found in it, is rooted in faith — a faith that took root when his injury happened. In a season filled with fear, uncertainty, and isolation, his parents and a fifth-grade teacher helped him lean on something stronger.
“I remember feeling lonely. Asking why this happened,”Sutherland said. “But that was the start of my faith in the Lord. My mom and dad told me to pray about it. And I had a teacher who wrote Bible verses for me — we’d read and talk about them together since I couldn’t go to recess. That really helped me.”
It helped him then. And it helps him now — as a player, as a mentor, and as a man who knows what it means to find purpose through pain.
“Realizing there’s more to it than just possibly losing your eye,” Sutherland said. “That something greater can come out of it.”