As Taylor Gabriel remembered it, he begged for a job.

This was more than four years ago, before Gabriel caught three passes for 76 yards in Super Bowl LI with the Falcons. Before the Bears decided his upside was worth a four-year, $26-million contract. Before he set a career high with 104 receiving yards on seven catches in his fourth game in a Bears uniform.

Gabriel was an undrafted rookie tryout hoping to stick with the 2014 Browns.

“A camp body,” he said. “Somebody there to fill up the numbers so the draft picks don’t run out and hurt themselves.”

Gabriel was the one who hurt himself, injuring his hamstring on his second day. But he wasn’t ready to give up, so he walked into Browns general manager Ray Farmer’s office and laid out a promise.

“I told him if he would give me an opportunity to come back and get healthy, it would be the best thing he has done that year,” Gabriel said.

Confidence is seemingly a prerequisite for NFL wide receivers, and the confidence Gabriel has brought to the Bears is borne from early experience.

It comes from showing throughout his life that his success can be bigger than his 5-foot-8, 165-pound frame. It comes from having a mother and father who believed in him from the time he was a 6-year-old Texas youth player running for a touchdown on his first career carry.

And it also comes from a deeper, more painful place, where he learned to channel the support of his mother after she died suddenly of a brain aneurysm when he was 15.

“That had to be one of the top worst things that could happen to a person,” Gabriel said. “So mentally overcoming that, I felt like I can overcome anything.”

An unforgettable conversation

Gabriel grew up in a football-loving family in suburban Dallas. His father, Calvin, remembered him using pennies to set up formations as a child. At the time, NFL dreams were still far off. Gabriel wanted to grow up to be a businessman and wear a suit and tie like his father, a software engineer.

But football games with his friends still went on “every day, all day.”

“Football was like eating in Texas,” Gabriel said. “Something that you had to do every day.”

Small and fast, just as he is today, he started out on defense but eventually asked to play running back. Calvin, a former defensive player, was heartbroken, until that first touchdown.

“That’s Taylor,” Calvin said. “He has that kind of aura, that kind of magic on him.”

Calvin coached Gabriel in youth football, but his mother Kimberly was the tougher of his parents. Gabriel remembered her aura as one that drew people to want to talk to her.

“An angel to anybody she came in contact with,” he said.

The Bears made a flurry of free-agency deals in the offseason. (Colleen Kane) (Colleen Kane)

But she also didn’t coddle her son. After all, she had big expectations for him.

“My mom was a trash talker, so I had to make sure I backed it up,” Gabriel said.

Calvin remembers a discussion with neighbors about who had caused trouble with a garage, and Gabriel’s parents asserted they didn’t believe their son was involved. One woman said something Kimberly didn’t like.

“She turned to them and said, ‘Let me tell you something: This one right here, someday the whole world will know his name,’” Calvin said, letting out a long, deep laugh. “She was an outstanding woman.”

Said Gabriel: “She was just confident in me when I wasn’t confident in myself. That’s one thing I miss about her.”

One night, Kimberly had a talk with her son, perhaps a typical mother-son conversation, but one that feels uncanny now. She told Gabriel she wasn’t always going to be around to get him going in the morning and make sure he was on time.

The next morning — 12 years ago last weekend — started off as a regular one. She dropped her son off at high school, but about an hour later, Gabriel’s father came to pick him up. Out of nowhere, Kimberly had died of a brain aneurysm.

“For her to say that that night, it was kind of weird,” Gabriel said. “That morning she had given me a tad bit of a whooping to make sure I was in line. You can look back and say, not that she knew, but it was like she was prepping me for the rest of my life. I look at that as a big steppingstone. It kept me going. … I felt like I had to do more than what was expected of me, for my mom. I feel like that for sure pushed me to make it to the NFL.”

Such realizations didn’t come at first.

For several months, Gabriel withdrew. He didn’t want to go to school or play football. He didn’t see the point.

“I felt like, who am I playing football for?” Gabriel said. “My mom isn’t here to cheer me on.”

Calvin called it “devastating” for the whole family. He thought he was going to spend the rest of his life with Kimberly, but suddenly he was the sole backbone for Gabriel and his younger sister and older brother. Gabriel called him “my Superman,” a person from whom he wants a syllabus on being a parent to help himself as a new father. In a sad way, Calvin said, the trauma brought them closer together.

Eventually, Gabriel returned to football and became an All-State wide receiver at John Horn High School. He landed at then-Division II Abilene Christian because he didn’t get his qualifying test scores in time for Division I schools, he said. He became second on Abilene Christian’s all-time receiving list with 215 career catches for 3,027 yards and 27 touchdowns.

He had found his motivation to play again, and proving Kimberly right was a large part of that.

“When I play football and when I’m on the field, I feel like I can feel her out there,” Gabriel said. “I never wanted to lose that feeling again.”

‘A crazy story’

Gabriel didn’t know it, but Farmer already was going to offer him a contract to continue into the preseason with the Browns when Gabriel went into the GM’s office to plead his case.

Before the 2014 draft, Gabriel and his father talked to a few teams. They thought he might be picked in the later rounds, but his name never was called.

My mom was a trash talker, so I had to make sure I backed it up. — Taylor Gabriel

“I looked at him, and he looked at me, and I said, ‘We’re going to have to go the long way,’” Calvin said. “And he said, ‘Let’s do it.’ He went about proving himself.”

Farmer didn’t know much about Gabriel beyond his pro day numbers indicated blazing speed and that Browns scouts thought he deserved a look.