By Andrew Porter

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Chris Polk and his mother Edrina Polk, have a special relationship. Edrina, without a father-figure by her side, not only told her son Chris how to be a better football player, but actually showed him.

Polk, the 24-year-old Eagles running back, grew up as the middle of three children (with a younger sister and older brother) to Edrina. Chris was an incredibly active child, always running around and Edrina, who played softball herself, searched for an activity for Chris.

“I went to the phone book and opened it, one time, and it came up Pop-Warner flag football,” Edrina Polk told Angelo Cataldi and the 94WIP Morning Show. Edrina gave Chris a football and told him to run around, eventually enrolling him in a flag-football league.

Polk dominated the Pop-Warner flag football league and his coach told Edrina that Chris needs to play contact football because, “he’s a special one.”

So, Edrina put pads on a young Chris.

“Putting on pads, you couldn’t even see the boy,” Edrina said of her son at the time, now 5’11”, 222-pounds. “The helmet was too big for his head.”

Edrina Polk on the WIP Morning Show:

Edrina instructed Chris to “punish the people trying to hit him” and to get every yard the coach asks of him. However, when Chris brushed her off, Edrina put the pads on herself and showed her son exactly how to be a more aggressive runner.

“She put on my older brothers’ pads and there’s this little football drill you do when you’re little and you both lay down, one of them has the ball, and you get up and you try to tackle,” Polk told the 94WIP Morning Show. “And so one day, like every week we would do this, and she would kill me. I mean, kill me—flatten me on my back.”

“We would both lay on our back, when I said hike, he had to get up, get the ball and get past,” Edrina Polk said. “About an hour, hour and a half, after each [team] practice.”

Finally, around the age of 12 or 13, Chris Polk—the NFL running back—was born.

“And one day, I was mad at her—I don’t remember what age I was—and I really just ran her over one good time and she just lay on the ground and kind of like screeched, ‘Yep, you’re ready,'” Chris Polk said.

Chris Polk on the WIP Morning Show:

“I couldn’t even breathe,” Edrina said. “When he had seen what he did, I was laying back, I couldn’t breathe, so I sit up. Both my boys ran to me. I said, ‘You’re ready son. You’re ready.'”

Currently Polk is the third back on the Eagles, behind LeSean McCoy and Darren Sproles, but hopes to someday be a lead back in the NFL.

“Being that I really know him personally, I know what my son can do,” Edrina said with confidence. “He’s an every down back. He’s a big back. He’s not a scat back. He’s gonna go through that line. Whatever yardage he needs to get, he’s gonna get it.”

How proud is Edrina of her son?

“Words can’t explain it,” she said. “I didn’t have that father next to me, so I had to be mom and dad. It’s phenomenal. It’s a beautiful experience. I am just so warm inside and bubbly and I’m crying. All that is inside. I am just so happy. I’m so proud of him.”

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