ALLEN PARK -- Three weeks before Ameer Abdullah would hurt his neck and the Detroit Lions needed a new lead running back, Tion Green's mother had a prediction to make to her son.

"'Come Baltimore, you're going to play in your first game,'" Green remembers her saying. "'You're going to make a touchdown. And I'm going to be there.'"

Green, an undrafted rookie out of Cincinnati, talks to his mother all the time. That day, he told her she was crazy.

But then Green was at the team hotel Saturday night in Baltimore when he got a knock on the door. A security guard told him that a woman was outside claiming to be his mother. Leticia Strickland lives in Sanford, Florida, and hadn't been able to get to any of his NFL games. He had texted with her just that morning, so he wondered now who on Earth was trying to prank him.

But when he got down to the driveway in front of the hotel, he spotted his mother's gold-toothed smile in the window of a car.

They went out to eat at PF Changs, and she reiterated the message: He was going to play the next day, and he was going to score his first touchdown. After growing up in what Green described as the projects, a meal of Chinese food out together was a big deal. The chance for her to see him in action would be even bigger -- but Abdullah's health and any chance at carries over Theo Riddick and Zach Zenner felt out of his control.

She told him it was going to happen anyway.

The next morning arrived, and Green was jogging on the M&T Bank Stadium grass when he spotted his mother meandering over to her seat in the end zone. She'd bought her own flight to the city, her own ticket to the game. She was there by herself, waiting, watching.

Green returned to the locker room to find his game jersey still hanging in the stall, and that's when he knew he'd play -- as a special teamer, he thought. The game plan wasn't written for him.

Just before the third series of the game, with Detroit trailing 3-0, Jim Caldwell spotted Green on the sideline and asked if he was ready to go. Green wondered if Caldwell was talking to fellow rookie Kenny Golladay. Then his head coach told him he was about to get the ball.

TJ Lang then tapped Green on the helmet and told him the offense needed a spark. Green admitted he's a little scared of his grizzled group of offensive linemen, and he knew what they expected out of a rookie in a playoff push.

On his very first play, Green took a handoff and ran left on an outside zone play and cut up the sideline for 33 yards. He'd wind up getting a team-high 11 carries in the game, turning those into 51 yards. In the third quarter, he finally got a chance to do what he always did in college -- run at the goal line -- and he took the toss left up around the edge and ran through Golden Tate's block to find the end zone.

"I didn't realize I hit Golden until this morning, when we watched it on film," Green said. "I kinda feel bad."

The wide receiver didn't seem to mind because when Green did the rookie move and passed up a celebration chance to hand the ball to the ref, Tate barked at him to get it back. Green would be keeping this one, his first touchdown as a pro.

Just as Mama predicted.

"She was the happiest woman in the world," Green said. "That was like my happy moment then. My mom, my whole life she told me, 'My biggest dream is I just want you to make it, and I just want to come to a game.'"

She came to the game. She watched him play and score, just as she predicted. And now she'll get the ball he did it with to keep back at home.

It was a small moment in a 44-20 blowout loss that puts the Lions' playoff fate in jeopardy now that they're 6-6. Because of that bottom line, the day didn't reach the goals Green had really wanted to find in his first NFL game.

It just contained the one that's lived inside him since those dinners in the projects.