Most of his teammates went straight for their water bottles, tired of playing in the Texas heat.

But when Kevin Strong came off the field during peewee games some 15 years ago, the Detroit Lions rookie defensive tackle made a beeline for his grandmother, who was waiting with a stack of homemade pancakes.

“I promise on everything I love,” Strong said Tuesday. “You can ask anybody. I’ll call my mom right now, my grandma, whatever. I would literally run to the sideline, no water, nothing like that. I would go take a couple of bites of the pancakes and I promise you I’d score a touchdown.”

He considers himself a pancake addict of sorts. As a kid, he ate them for breakfast, lunch, dinner and sometimes had more for a snack.

“Come home after school, she knew I wanted three pancakes,” he said. “Dinner, I don’t know why, I was just addicted to pancakes.”

Strong said he’s not sure what drove his love for pancakes, but for a few years they were his power pellets on the field.

He ate them before games with a glass of milk, and at games his grandmother would greet him with a carryout box filled with pancakes and all the condiments she could find.

“She had plastic forks and all that for me,” he said. “The only thing she didn’t have was my milk that I put with it. But honest to God, she had the syrup, then she had a little syrup in a container in case it’d dry up too much.”

While Strong still eats pancakes now, he said he’s been more on a waffle kick of late.

“I had to get away from it cause I was getting fat,” he said. “I started gaining too much weight. I’m telling you, that’s all I ate. I didn’t put eggs with them, sausage, none of that. I mean, sometimes. But I was a pancake guy. I always wanted pancakes.”

One of three undrafted rookies to make the 53-man roster, Strong said he was "smiling from cheek to cheek" when the team sent out an internal email with its roster Saturday and he saw his name.

Immediately, he went back to his hotel room to share the news with his parents over FaceTime — but at first, he tried to play it off as if he got cut.

Strong's father, Kevin Sr., is battling Stage 4 lung cancer, and Strong said his parents, the two biggest supporters in his life, were overcome with joy at the news that he made the team.

"To see that type of emotion come from my dad, 'cause like I said, he shows his emotion, but he's more laid-back and chill," Strong said. "So to see him actually jump up and jump around like, 'Haaa,' that was amazing. I knew that I truly brought happiness to him."

Early arrival

Typically, the Lions travel to road games the day before they play. For Sunday’s season opener, they’re leaving Friday, a day early.

“Same thing we did last year,” coach Matt Patricia said. “Going out to Arizona, it was kind of, we liked our approach to it, to get out there and get settled in. So just thought it’d be, it was a good approach last year and we’re going to stay with that.”

The Lions beat the Cardinals, 17-3, last season.

Patricia said Arizona’s heat — it’s projected to be 103 degrees on Sunday — was not a factor in his decision to spend an extra day out west.

“Not from a standpoint of us getting acclimated or anything like that,” he said. “We’re not going to be doing any extensive practicing or anything like that in it, so it’s more just a travel thing.”

Briefly

The Lions released wide receiver Andy Jones from injured reserve.

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett. Read more on the Detroit Lions and sign up for our Lions newsletter.