Kyle Goon: O.J. Brigance always beat the odds. His willpower is his remarkable legacy.

From the first time O.J. Brigance stepped foot in Baltimore, he was already laying out a plan that only he could see.

One of the first men Brigance met on his first visit to Charm City in 1994 was Mike Gathagan, who handled public relations for the then-CFL Colts (later to be rebranded the Baltimore Stallions). The car ride from Memorial Stadium back to the airport has lingered with him the longest.

Brigance had spent the previous three seasons starring for the BC Lions, but he wanted to move back to the U.S. to be seen by NFL teams. He had a goal to make it to the league.

For all the big dreams he had, Brigance was still a 6-foot-tall outside linebacker who weighed maybe 220 pounds, a lightweight in any football league. Gathagan thought the new linebacker was bright — but as Brigance outlined this vision, Gathagan exchanged a skeptical glance with the team’s equipment manager in the front passenger seat.

“I thought, ‘What a well-spoken, articulate human being,’” Gathagan said, “‘but he’s way too small to play in the NFL.’”

Not only would Brigance win a Grey Cup (the Canadian Football League championship) with the Stallions in 1995, but he would play in the NFL for seven seasons, peaking with the Super Bowl XXXV champion Ravens. He’s still the only person to win both a Grey Cup and a Super Bowl playing in the same market.

Is it any surprise that Brigance — whom his friends affectionately called “Juice” — would defy odds throughout his entire life? Of course it isn’t. Not at all.

When Brigance was diagnosed with ALS in 2007, he was 37-years-old. Friends worried that the former standout special teamer, known for his hard tackling, wouldn’t make it to 40.

When Brigance died Monday, he was 56 years old. Only about 5% of ALS patients make it 20 years past their diagnosis, according to the ALS Association, so Brigance’s 19 years puts him in very rare company. Because of course it does.

“Whatever the statistics were, O.J. was gonna be in the top percent,” former Ravens tight end Todd Heap told me in 2023. “That’s just kinda how he’s always been.”

In all things, Brigance defied probability with a iron willpower that made him unforgettable. It’s the thread that connects the two most distinct chapters of his life.

As a player, he was a scrappy, undersized inspiration. CFL Hall of Famer Elfrid Payton (the father of an NBA player with the same name) was an opponent before they became teammates in Baltimore. For the 1993 season, they traded off as the CFL sack leader — Payton finished with 22, but Brigance was right behind him with 20, in spite of his small stature.

“He ain’t really say much, but he let his play speak,” Payton said. “O.J. just had a motor.”

When the Stallions folded as the Ravens moved into town, Brigance asked Gathagan to send him a phone number for every single NFL team. He called them all one at a time, asking for a workout.

Only two of the 30 teams said yes — and between the Dallas Cowboys and Miami Dolphins, Brigance went to Miami largely because their player personnel man had CFL roots and he thought he’d get a better shot at a roster spot. When coach Jimmy Johnson watched Brigance play special teams, the role he would become best known for in the NFL, he was smitten. “Juice” played for the Dolphins for the next four seasons.

Once you understand the determination it took for Brigance to grind his way to the NFL after five years in Canadian football does it really start to click how aggressively he attacked his ALS diagnosis.

As Brigance wrote in his memoir, “Strength of a Champion,” it was his wife Chanda who posited that surviving ALS could be like any other challenge in his life.

“‘Your whole life has been being told no,’” Brigance wrote of Chanda’s motivational urging. “‘No, you can’t play major college football. No, you can’t play in the pros. No, you can’t make an NFL roster. Every single time, you proved them wrong and you did it. Why should this be any different?’”

The Brigance Brigade Foundation started in 2008, and Brigance told me that it made him the proudest. That was its own battle against the odds: Gathagan was one of the first board members, and their first fundraiser was held without a budget.

The organization raised $57,000 in its first event, held at M&T Bank Stadium in a space provided at no cost by the Ravens, with a volunteer workforce. It would go on to give out millions in grants to other ALS patients to help them with wheelchairs and other medical equipment to help them live fuller lives with the disease.

Brigance did not become, as he hoped, the first man to beat ALS. But the fight to live 19 years past his diagnosis was awe-inspiring.

In his later years, Brigance could not breathe on his own. Every sentence was painstakingly communicated through software that tracked his eye movement, the only way to communicate his thoughts.

Over the last two days, I’ve read and re-read an email that Brigance sent me in 2023. It’s 924 words.

“Though we have been diagnosed with ALS, life must still be lived,” he wrote. “Every day God allows us to open our eyes there is a purpose in that day, so make the most of it.”

Brigance didn’t just write those words. He lived them.

It was tedious and time-consuming for Brigance to leave his house, especially when he needed around-the-clock monitoring. Yet he took his role as a Ravens special adviser seriously. He showed up to work because he loved it. He relished the chance to send notes to players and coaches. Head coach Jesse Minter mentioned that one of his first messages he got when he came to work for the Ravens in 2017 was from Brigance.

It was common to see Brigance sitting outside the practice field, because even though watching football was somewhat bittersweet, he still loved it: “While the game and preparations have changed over the years, the excitement of a new beginning where the possibilities are endless is always thrilling!” he wrote to me.

When Gathagan missed a call from Chanda on Monday, he immediately felt a knot in his stomach. When he called her back, he reached a voicemail recording that included O.J.’s voice before it was taken away by the ravages of ALS. The sound made him weep because he suspected his friend of 32 years was gone.

Gathagan later learned that Brigance had been close to the end early Monday morning, in a room with Chanda and his parents. But when they thought he might pass at 5 a.m., O.J. held out just a little longer — pushing just a little further past noon, scraping for those extra hours.

“It was like he was fighting for that extra day,” Gathagan said.

The fight never scared O.J. Brigance — not on the football field, and not with one of the world’s most vicious diseases. His old teammates will miss him, but they believe that somewhere, Brigance is whole again.

“He battled every single day for years,” former Stallions teammate Josh Miller wrote in a text message. “He’s got his old body back and is looking down with the biggest smile imaginable.”

He leaves behind a legacy of how much the human spirit can endure without breaking. And you have to admit: That seems like it was O.J.’s plan all along.