By Phil Richards

phil.richards@indystar.com

Robert Mathis is a rush linebacker, a gut-busting sack-meister, game-wrecker and the NFL's inaugural Deacon Jones Award winner. He's also the baby in a family of six and its mama's boy, and that's why the best football season of his life has not been without heartache.

Mathis' mother, Emma Lou, 69, was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus in May. She normally would have been in Indianapolis for perhaps five of the Indianapolis Colts' eight home games and most certainly their wild-card playoff game with the Kansas City Chiefs. She would have arrived the week before Christmas to begin turning out chicken gizzards and rice and Robert's other favorite dishes.

Not this year. She has stayed home in Atlanta, but Robert doesn't despair.

"Trust me, she's been at home recovering and watching on TV and fussing at any O-lineman who knocks me to the ground," he said. "She's definitely been with me, just not physically."

Emma has undergone surgery, is in remission and doing well. She is Robert's superhero and role model. Throughout his youth she arose in the pre-dawn dark to say her prayers, then got her kids fed and off to school to spend her days cleaning the homes of Atlanta's affluent.

Robert's father drank. He was gone by the time Robert was 5 and dead by the time Robert was a sophomore at Alabama A&M. Emma qualified for welfare but never accepted it. She would arrive home nightly at 6 or 7, worn, weary but dignified.

If you want to know where Robert got it, look to Emma. If you want to know what "it" is, ask a man charged with blocking him tonight during an AFC divisional game at New England.

"I think it's rare that you get a guy that has that much talent and then plays so hard every play and that's him," Patriots tackle Nate Solder said. "That's the challenge of him."

Always a hard-charger

Robert posed other challenges as a kid. Emma knows.

He was a self-described "junior daredevil." As a 5-year-old, he used to bounce on a bed and perform backflips, most memorably the time he landed on his head. Robert's neck was jammed. His chin was pinned to his chest, his right ear cocked frighteningly near his right shoulder.

That occasioned his first trip to the emergency room.

"I had something every week with that boy," said Emma, who wasn't available for comment this week but spoke to Robert's adventures in a previous interview. "He'd be climbing trees, falling out of trees, jamming his neck. I'd be running him to the hospital: Scared me to death."

Maybe it's a proclivity of the super-gifted. Former Colts safety and 2007 NFL Defensive Player of the Year Bob Sanders, too, was a youth acrobat who leaped with neither inhibitions nor net. It wasn't enough to do somersaults and backflips. Like Mathis, Sanders did them from tree limbs, fence tops and garage roofs.

Demario Mathis, a deputy sheriff 13 months Robert's senior, was his "brother/best friend" and "partner in crime."

They were 6 and 7 when the landlord of the house they rented built a brick wall in the yard. It was a sturdy and handsome wall but it had three issues: Robert, Demario and the pile of spare bricks left at its completion.

"The day he made it, that evening, me and my brother broke 'em up, just busted up the wall," Robert recalled. "We just grabbed a brick and broke the wall."

New England coach Bill Belichick calls Mathis "one of the most disruptive players in the league." He was disruptive early. Not a brick remained in place.

"We had no clue we were doing anything wrong," Mathis said. "We were just kids.

"Our mom, she had to pay for that and she gave us a good one. We definitely learned our lesson."

Drawing a bead

It's Mathis giving the spankings now. He has terrorized quarterbacks this season as never before in a decorated, 11-year career.

His 19½ sacks set a franchise season record, led the NFL and earned the Deacon Jones Award. Sixteen of Mathis' sacks killed or helped kill opponents' drives. Two others forced field goals.

His eight forced fumbles led the league and he pushed his NFL record for strip/sacks to 42. Nearly 38 percent of his 111 career sacks have resulted in fumbles.

No wonder Patriots quarterback Tom Brady called him "one of the best players in the NFL" and ESPN analyst Trent Dilfer characterized him as a "game-wrecker."

"The NFL has very few game-wreckers and he's one of them," said Dilfer, who toiled 14 years as an NFL quarterback. "J.J. Watt is another one. DeMarcus Ware, when he's healthy, and (Geno) Atkins for Cincinnati before he got hurt was one.

"There are a handful of game-wreckers where you have to take your entire game plan (and adapt it)."

Mathis has reached another level in this, his first season, at rush linebacker. He spent his first nine NFL seasons at left defensive end in a 4-3 scheme. He was a hand-in-the-dirt down lineman opposite the Colts' more celebrated right end, Dwight Freeney.

Mathis spent last season again opposite Freeney, at strong-side, or SAM, linebacker in the Colts 3-4. Mathis worked the tight end side and frequently dropped into coverage.

He has been turned loose this season with the decision to not re-sign Freeney. As rush 'backer, Mathis lines up bent over in a three-point stance or upright in a two-point stance. He sets up on the right side or the left, on the outside or the inside. Ninety-five percent of the time he is in launch mode: Get the quarterback.

Colts defensive coordinator Greg Manusky speculates that Mathis would have many more sacks than his team-record 111 had he played more rush linebacker.

Mathis shrugs. He is one to neither second guess nor harbor regrets. His mom was a choir member at Holy Temple Baptist Church. So was Robert. Like Emma, he believes things happen for a reason. He accepts them.

His size is one example. He has made it an asset. Mathis is listed at 6-2, 246 pounds, but he's unfailingly honest. He's 6-feet, even, he will tell you, and he uses it to advantage on the succession of 6-5, and 6-6, 300-plus-pound tackles he faces.

"In football, low man wins," said Mathis, a six-time Pro Bowl player and eminent Defensive Player of the Year candidate. "If you get leverage, get in a better position than the blocker, you're going to win the majority of the time."

Mathis will be 33 next month but he's still raising his game. He is in the second season of a four-year, $36 million contract. Should he average 12 sacks over the two remaining seasons, he could threaten to join the NFL's top 10, although four active players are ahead of him: Minnesota's Jared Allen (age 30 and No. 12 with 128½ sacks), Chicago's Julius Peppers (32, 17th, 119) and Dallas' Ware (30, 18th, 117).

That's heady company for the 138th player taken in the 2003 draft. If you're looking for the best pick of former Colts president/vice chairman Bill Polian's distinguished career, you might stop here. Mathis was acquired with a fifth-round pick the Colts received for sending their 2004 fourth-round choice to the Houston Texans.

Showing the way

What Mathis has become is more than an exceptional player. Teammates such as quarterback Andrew Luck, inside linebacker Jerrell Freeman and defensive end Cory Redding stand in line to say playing with him is an honor.

"Great teammate," Luck said.

"Legend," Freeman attested.

"Better person than he is a football player," Redding avowed.

Redding is an 11-year veteran who was signed as a free agent from Baltimore in 2012 to set the edge and supply defensive leadership. He knew he wouldn't lead alone.

"We, as players, we talk," Redding said. "You text and you talk and you're on the phone. You hear in other guys' locker rooms about other guys.

"The only thing that came out of this locker room was that Robert Mathis is a leader."

Mathis' devotion to team and teammates might best be expressed by his savage intensity. He is the quiet warrior who plays to the whistle every snap of every practice, every game.

During the third quarter of a Dec. 22 game against Houston, Mathis lined up across from the Texans' 6-4, 303-pound Duane Brown. It was Pro Bowl rusher against Pro Bowl tackle.

Brown engaged Mathis, worked his feet, rode Mathis deep into the end zone and seemingly well out of the play. Mathis just kept driving, churning. When quarterback Case Keenum held the football an instant too long, Mathis broke free, hit him, stripped him and caused a safety.

"Bull----," spat Brown, who recovered in the end zone. Brown knew he had done everything right, and then some, but Mathis' dogged determination, a quality inherited from his mother, had won the battle within the war.

That kind of effort and those kinds of plays have characterized Mathis for 11 seasons.

That's why Colts coach Chuck Pagano gushes so.

"He's a selfless guy. He's a team guy. He's a horseshoe guy. He's a pillar guy," Pagano said. "He's going to be in that 'Ring of Honor' at some point when it's all said and done."

Given Mathis' team-first orientation, that would be a signal honor but his heart lies nearer home.

Rush linebacker, gut-buster, sack-meister and game-wrecker aren't the designations that truly define him. Husband and father are. Mathis is committed to being the kind of husband his mother never had and the kind of father he never knew.

"My two most important titles," he said. "I definitely take it to heart and take it very seriously. My boys, they're my world."

Mathis skipped the 2012 Pro Bowl to stay home and the change diapers of his and wife Brandi's infant twin sons, who Thursday celebrated their second birthday. The boys were originally named for their father, Robert Nathan and Nathan Robert, but now go by Mason and Jason, the better to allow them seek "their own identities."

One needn't ask where Mathis' devotion originates.

"Straight from the top down," he said. "My mom, she's instilled in me and I'm going to instill it into my boys the best way I know how: Be the best father I can be."

Email Star reporter Phil Richards at phil.richards@indystar.com and follow him on Twitter at @philrichards6.