New Orleans Saints linebacker Demario Davis ducked a curtain call after his team’s 16-15 win over the Tennessee Titans Sunday, where he led the team with 10 tackles.
Instead, he spoke at a post-game press conference to thank God for healing his 4-year-old daughter, who suffered a 30-minute epileptic seizure on Friday. A video clip of his remarks posted by the Saints on X, the service formerly called Twitter, has racked up more than 1.2 million views as of Monday afternoon.
Davis said Carly-Faith, the younger of his two daughters, “had her third epilepsy seizure attack” after a period of nearly two years without such attacks.
On the way to the hospital, he said his daughter twice stopped breathing in the ambulance.
“At this point, if she’s seized for 30 minutes, you start to fear there could be development issues that could mess with her brain,” he told reporters. “She stopped breathing, if there’s no oxygen going to her brain, you’re starting to think about will her speech be slurred or anything. Or worse. So we prayed, and we prayed and she had medicine, and my wife and I had to stay overnight at the hospital.”
He told reporters that he prayed en route to the hospital. “I’m nervous, but … I’m trusting, and I’m believing. And I’m not asking for my daughter to make it through, I’m asking that she’s better than before.”
The linebacker prefaced his remarks with a verse from the New Testament book of Revelation, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20, King James Version).
“In the middle of the night, probably about 3 o’clock, I heard a knock,” Davis said. “And the knock was my daughter. I said, ‘God, let this be just be an attack from the enemy that’s just trying to be a distraction and let him have overplayed his hand and my daughter come back stronger than before.’”
He said, “When I heard my daughter talk in the middle of the night — and my daughter, she doesn’t have any development issues, she doesn’t have any slurred speech prior to this — she woke up talking clearer than she was talking before.”
Davis said Carly-Faith went home that Saturday morning and participated in a birthday party for her 7-year-old sister later that day. He said they watched the 4-year-old to make sure she didn’t overexert herself.
He summed up the experience saying, “God gave me just what I asked for, plus some. I was blown away. And at that point, I knew the game was going to take care of itself. My knock had already been answered, and I just want people to know if you’ve got stuff going on in your life, lay it before the Lord. Lay it before the Lord and trust. And be expecting of a knock. Because the word says what you have to do is, you have to get up and open the door. And your blessing is going to be there.”
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.