HOUSTON — Moments before Super Bowl LI kicks off, perhaps during the national anthem, when he closes his eyes, the littlest Falcon, who has overcome the biggest odds, will be thinking about the angel forever in his life.

“Mom, I made it,” Taylor Gabriel said.

“Mom, I made it.”

Made it to the Super Bowl all the way from Abilene Christian as an undrafted free agent. Made it to the Super Bowl after the heartbreak of being cut right before the season by the Browns after two seasons and 64 catches. Made it to the Super Bowl at 5-foot-8, 170 pounds soaking wet.

“She always felt like I was going to be greater than what I thought I was going to be,” Gabriel said.

Kimberly Gabriel was right.

“If I had a bad game or something, you would think your mom would kind of baby you up and hug you and say, ‘Have a good game next time,’ ” Taylor Gabriel said. “But my mom was different, man, she would just tell me to do better next time and ‘Don’t come home without doing good.’ She was more kind of the enforcer than my dad was, and that’s kind of why I love her so much.”

She was a sweet, kind-hearted, caring woman.

“She was like a gospel singer at different churches, she had her own album and things like that,” Gabriel said. “She was kind of famous in the Dallas area before I was.”

He was 16 the last time he saw her.

“She just dropped me off at school like a regular normal day, gave me two dollars for lunch, and she left,” Gabriel recalled. “Then I got a call, I would say about an hour or so later, saying that she had passed away from a brain aneurysm.”

The call came from the principal at John Horn High School in Mesquite.

“My principal called me out of class and my dad was at my school, and he just told me while we were walking out,” Gabriel said.

The boy’s life was temporarily shattered.

“I kind of like locked myself away in my room for a little bit,” he said. “I quit football, and didn’t want to do anything anymore. I was sad, I was depressed and Gobahis things like that. I had a lot of emotions going on. I just felt like football wasn’t something that I wanted to do anymore, because my mom wasn’t here to cheer me on while I was going to be there playing football.”

With his family’s help and support, Gabriel returned to football later in the season.

“Me getting back on the field for that first time and feeling her out there and feeling her presence, it was something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” Gabriel said.

“That first game I came back, I had like an 80-yard screen for a touchdown, and I never wanted to not feel that sensation of hyping a crowd up, and just thinking of hearing my mom in that crowd, and I feel like every time I touch a football, man, I feel like I’m hearing my mom while I’m out there.

He will hear his mom Sunday, when he will have a chance to show off his 4.27 speed and be the X-Factor for Matt Ryan and the Falcons, and maybe do the touchdown dance he calls The Briefcase. They call him Turbo Taylor.

“She was a big part of me coming back and playing football,” Gabriel said. “I feel like football is the only way for me to really just feel that presence of my mom when I’m out there on the field, and I feel like that’s why I go so hard to stay in the NFL, and to be in this limelight and things like that so I can be closer to my mom when I’m out there.”

His father, brother and sister will be at NRG Stadium. Asked how he would like to honor his mom, Gabriel said: “Every snap I take, just taking a prayer for her and just knowing that she’s watching me before every snap and protecting me out there.”

He scored six touchdowns this season, and jokes that “quadruple coverage” on Julio Jones will let him exploit man-to-man on him. He is certain that Kimberly Gabriel is proud of him.

“You carry that chip on your shoulder, and just the doubters, man, I’ve had a lot of doubters through my whole NFL career with my height, my size and things like that,” Gabriel said. “Yeah, man, you’re going to have to carry that chip on your shoulder just to make sure you do that extra and above to make sure no one else is working as hard as you are. I just love kinda just proving people wrong and things like that, just showing others that you can overcome anything that gets put in your way.”

Mom, he made it:

“I still have those two dollars she gave me,” Gabriel said. “I take those two dollars everywhere I go and the Bible that she gave me.

“Mom, I made it.”

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