Ndamukong Suh.

Two words that bring lingering night terrors to quarterbacks everywhere.

There's a person out there, though, who remembers the 6-foot-4, 305-pound Dolphins defensive behemoth as someone else entirely.

"Oh, he was very cuddly," Bernadette Suh said of her son. "Sometimes we would sit and watch TV, and he would cuddle beside me or lay beside me."

Growing up in Portland, Oregon, Suh the boy was far more focused on brick-building than slamming Tom Brady to the turf.

"He was very observant. Very creative. Liked playing. Was very creative with building his LEGOs," said Bernadette. "He would make something out of nothing."

As fans, we possess these players when they reach the NFL. Judge them. Fawn over them. Analyze them to pieces. Laud them when they delight us and, in some cases, fry them on social media when they fail to carry our vicarious fantasy lineups into the promised land.

We don't truly know them, but the women who raised them do. As we prepare to celebrate Mother's Day, we asked a trio of NFL moms to tell us who their sons really are.

Before they were picked apart and graded by pro scouts, these players began their careers in backyards and parks at the lowest levels -- watched by their mothers.

Bernadette Suh saw Ndamukong emerge as "very, very coordinated for his age," but football was an unknown world to the family for much of his childhood.

"I honestly didn't think that he would have reached the pinnacle he's at right now until he was in high school. Because he didn't play football until he was a sophomore," Bernadette said. "I kind of thought that maybe he would be a basketball player, if anything, or soccer. He started playing soccer when he was about 3 and was very coordinated and had a very good sense of the game. ... In terms of sports, he's one of those kids that really enjoyed playing. Whether it was just tetherball, hitting the ball, throwing the ball to each other, riding his bike. Any kind of playing. He was a very active child."

Said Bernadette: "Football came later in high school, primarily because -- even though he had the size for it -- I didn't want him really playing it because, to me, it's just a rough game, and I just thought, I don't want my child playing football. It's too rough. And not understanding the game myself made it even a harder decision for me to want to have him do it. But it was something that he truly wanted to play, and so, you know, over time, I think ... I allowed him to play it, because I felt at that point, he's big enough, he's old enough, he understands the game, and so I felt like he could protect himself a little better."

In the Kelce home, Donna knew her boys viewed sports as a polestar. Jason and Travis always seemed to know they had a bright future on the field.

"I think they both believed it at a very young age. There was no doubt about it," Donna said. "I remember I told them, whenever they'd be in timeout, 'Practice your signature, because you're going to be signing a lot of things when you grow up.' But you don't really know. You know that they're better than everyone they're playing with at the moment, but you don't know how that relates nationally."

If the Kelces were sports-obsessed, the same was true for Marshall.

"In the back of my trunk, I had footballs, baseballs, tennis balls, you name it," Diane said. "Anything to keep him busy. We would burn that energy down and get him home, get him a bath and put him to bed. Early on, that's just what he did all day long."

We watch games from afar, cheering and despising players we'll never meet. When one of those athletes is your child, though, everything changes.

Football's inherent violence leaves parents to confront a jumbled nest of nerves as they watch their sons rendered vulnerable to pain and injury.

"It's always in the back of my mind," said Bernadette Suh. "It's something that I pray about every game and, after every game, I thank the Lord that [Ndamukong] comes out OK. ... I'm very, very wary about that. ... It stays in the back of your mind all the time."

Donna Kelce has endured watching both of her children suffer significant injuries. Travis spent the first year of his Chiefs career rehabbing from microfracture surgery, while Jason went down with a torn ACL in 2012 while his mother was in the stands.

"That was against the Ravens. That was a tough one," Donna said. "And I realized how independent he was when his buddies were carrying him into a truck, and I said, 'Would you like me to help you?' And he says, 'No, mom. I got it covered.' That's when I realized that they're totally on their own, they're totally capable of handling everything that comes across their plate."

Beyond the tension, the game itself offers these mothers an incredible experience of seeing their children chase their dreams, leaving Donna to say of her boys: "Basically, it's fantastic. You get to see them play on Sunday. I either get to see them on TV or I get to see them in person. They're both out of town, so I miss them terribly. ... it's a very demanding career, so the time I do get to spend with them is very, very precious."

For Diane Bolden, the emotions often bubble up before Brandon even plays a down.

"I can give you a perfect example," she said. "He was playing with the Miami Dolphins at the time, and we were going up the escalators to go up to our suite, and there were four little boys with his jersey on, and I just lost it. I literally started crying."

Today's NFL transforms 20-somethings into instant millionaires and household names. Barely men, these players face insane temptations.

Is it enough to keep a mother up at night?

"I've never really had problems with that," Donna Kelce said. "I pride myself in teaching them the social game, which is to be involved in your community, respect people's time and keep being inclusive."

For Donna, that even meant watching Travis take his love life public on last year's "Catching Kelce", a dating show on E! that swarmed the pass-catcher with no fewer than 50 suitors in hopes the Pro Bowler might find love.

"He is in a smaller market. You have to do what you have to do," Donna said. "The career is not long, and you have to make the biggest bang that you can in the shortest amount of time. He knew that would help him further his name, and people would start to know who he was, and he would get to know the people in the industry."

Furthering one's name was no problem for Suh early in his career, but much of the attention was unwanted, as the defender was lashed by critics for moments of aggressive -- sometimes flag-worthy -- on-field play.

Bernadette Suh admitted she struggled right away with the narratives that formed around Ndamukong.

"When he first entered the league, I was really nervous about things that I would hear announcers say about other players. And I was nervous about how they were going to perceive my child," Bernadette said. "And after games, I would try to read everything that they would say about him in the newspapers, magazine, radio, whatever. And it got to the point where maybe, in about his third year, some of the things I would hear them say -- or people they would compare him to -- somewhat, it would bother me. And, finally, I said something to him one day about something I had read. And he said to me, 'Mom, you need to stop reading those things.' And I took it to heart."

No matter what you feel about Suh, the idea that an over-the-top penalty or two would characterize his entire persona never made sense.

"I feel like sometimes the things they say are not really, truly about your kid. They're imagining some of their thoughts," Bernadette said. "Because I did hear a couple things an announcer said, and I wondered, Are they really talking about my child? They really don't know my child, because this is not the kid I raised."

In Bernadette's eyes, Ndamukong hasn't been changed by his career or the praise and criticism that come with it, saying: "I think, for the most part, he is the same person. He is very humble."