When Jadarian Price was 12 years old, his mother sat him down for the conversation neither of them wanted to have. Jessica Butler was 31. She had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. And what she told her son was that she didn't know how long she was going to be here. She also told him what she was most upset about. She didn't want to miss any more of his games. Butler had Jadarian as a teenager, before she'd even started nursing school. She raised him and his two younger sisters, Kzaria and Lyricah, on one income in Denison, Texas. She worked full-time in hospice care, then cleaned toilets, drove Uber and delivered DoorDash on the side to close the gap. Then came the diagnosis, and 16 rounds of chemotherapy. Her parents and her brother drove her to every one. While that was happening, her 12-year-old son cooked for his sisters, who were 10 and 6. He took care of them. He went to middle school. He played football. She thought she was going to die. In 2017, two years after doctors handed her what felt like a death sentence, Jessica Butler was declared cancer free. She has been in remission ever since. Her son went on a tear. At Denison High School, Price ran for 4,990 all-purpose yards and 55 touchdowns in 39 games. As a senior he rushed for 1,803 yards and averaged more than nine yards a carry. He was his district's offensive player of the year twice. He picked Notre Dame over Ohio State, Texas and USC. Then it got hard again. He missed his entire freshman season to a serious injury. When he got healthy, he spent three years as the backup behind Jeremiyah Love, widely considered one of the best players in college football. Second string. Three straight years. Programs came at him with millions in NIL money to transfer. Real, life-changing money for a family that had never had any. He told them no. "It's bad when you don't come from much and then your mom hears the offer they're giving you up front," Price said. "I felt some type of way when I had to tell her I have a plan and I want to stay at Notre Dame, even though I'm going to be making half of what this life-changing money is." He stayed. His mother cried when she heard what he was turning down. In April, Jeremiyah Love went third overall to Arizona. About two and a half hours later, the Seattle Seahawks used the 32nd pick on Jadarian Price, to replace Kenneth Walker III, who had just won Super Bowl MVP and left for Kansas City. The pick came with an $8.7 million signing bonus. He knew exactly what he was doing with it. Price went back to Denison and bought his family a house. "That was the biggest goal of mine since I made it to the NFL." Then last week, he made his NFL debut at Lumen Field. He started. He ran for 52 yards on 10 carries as Seattle beat New England 13-10. Jessica Butler was in the stands. Eleven years after she sat her 12-year-old down and told him she might not be around much longer, she watched her son start his first game in the National Football League, from a seat he paid for with the same check that bought her a home. Price has said the whole thing pretty simply. "I truly believe that in order to grow, you have to go through pain and adversity. Watching my mom go through that, it made me believe there's nothing that could stop me. She went through the worst. So what's one more bad day of adversity for me?" She didn't miss the game. Hat tip to Andrew Destin and @TheAthletic, who told this story first. For more stories like this, follow us on any platform @thesportsontap