When she came back from being "out in the world," which is what Camilla Stewart calls those horrific days she was strung out on drugs so far that not even a bullet in the head got her clean, there were times she wondered if her only son loved her.

"I used to think, 'Does this kid love me?' because Tee never talked," Stewart says. "He's not a big talker, and he's really just started opening up since he's been in the NFL. He's not a big talker. He's very private."

Everyone found out how much Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins loves his mother last week during the news conference crowning her son and Ja’Marr Chase as the richest wide receiver tandem in NFL history when he opened up like a Joe Burrow offense.

That would be "Big Game Tee." Try 103 yards in an AFC title game. A hundred more in a Super Bowl. A Sweet 16 December touchdowns.

"Ma, I love you. I did this for us. This is for us," said Tamaurice Williams Higgins, named for his grandfathers and gifted with his mother's grip on tenacity.

Camilla Stewart got the answer long before last week when she clicked on the Bengals app to view the news of a lifetime. Long before he gave her that dream car of a white Mercedes-Benz. Long before he pulled her out of Section 8 housing and put her 10 minutes but a life away from Oak Ridge, Tenn.

It was shortly after she came back from being out in the world and she was driving teenager Tee to football camps at Clemson and the University of Tennessee "and all over," in the bubble Chevy that was older than him.

"Back then, we had the GPS, but we had those real big GPS," Stewart says. "I was the only one taking him to camp. We would just get in the car and ride. And we'd talk. He'd just tell me, 'Mom, I love you.' And people would call him a mama's boy and he'd say, 'I am.' He's not ashamed to say it. He's a mama's boy. He's my baby."

Tee Higgins also paid homage to his father. When Eric Higgins passed two years ago, his mother began to hear him talk more and more. Then, there he was last week under the glare of the bright lights using those big hands to form an even bigger heart.

"That made me the happiest mother in the world," Stewart says. "I know he probably could have gotten money elsewhere. But it wasn't about the money. It was more of him wanting to be a Bengal and playing with his brothers. I've always told him it's God's timing. When he got drafted, God put him right where he needed to be.

"He's always been a good kid. All through school. He was never troubled. I thank God he's humble. I've told him, what God has blessed you with you have to embrace. You were blessed from the womb."

If anyone taught him about the contested catches he dominates, it's his mother. Camilla Stewart's life was one big 50-50 ball that could have gone either way. She snatched it in a jail cell when Tee was eight and her daughter KeKe was 18, vowing to get clean for them.

The timing turned out to be impeccable. Mother and son grew together. She put her life together piece by piece, living with her mother and working as a cashier at Ryan's Steakhouse. When Tee came to her and said he wanted his own room so he could have sleepovers with friends, she applied for public housing. She was accepted and moved into a two-bedroom apartment.

"He saw the struggle. He saw me get clean," Stewart says. "He saw me try to provide for him."

As Tee made a name on the football field and basketball court, Stewart became "Lady Stewart," to family and friends in the community of Oak Valley Baptist Church.

When she couldn't get the hang of waitressing at a Shoney's, she turned to home health care and worked in the Alzheimer's unit to stay in the apartment. She moved on from the bubble Chevy to a Durango to a Tahoe. When the white Benz got flipped over three times last year, he got her another one.

"It's that new gray-looking color," she says.

What she knows for sure is what happened last week is "life changing." But not transformational.

"I'm the same person. No better than anybody. Just blessed," Stewart says.

It is choir rehearsal night at Oak Valley Baptist, and it's not the only day she's there. She's there every Wednesday night for Bible study, where she helps teach the upper elementary class. She also drives the van to pick up the kids and drop them off.

She's still working, too, but it's hard to consider it a job because it's fun working for KeKe, an LPN who now runs her own home health care company.

"Her daughter may follow in her footsteps,' Stewart says of a granddaughter about to graduate from high school. "She wants to go into either forensics or nursing."

Stewart says she'll retire one day. Right now, she's thinking about her son and the Super Bowl.

"He's going to go back and they're going to win it," she says. "It's their time."

Her mama's boy was damn near the MVP the last time they got there. Even if Tee Higgins wins it in the next one, he'll have a hard time topping his mom's own 50-50 story she grabbed for dear life and hauled it back in from out in the world.

"We're close. We're really close, and I know how he feels about me," says Camilla Stewart, who heard the mama's boy tell her again, only this time in front of the whole world. "It bought tears to my eyes. I wasn't expecting that."