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After all, the five sons they crammed into the tiny two-bedroom home in the St. Bernard Housing Project in New Orleans, the one with the cardboard-thin walls and incessant mildew smell, were mostly grown and gone. Youngest son Jerome was 15 years old and Olivia desperately wanted to dress one of her children in pink frocks after 20-plus years of blue jeans. Charles figured it was time to exchange the baseball bats for baby dolls.

Even as their five sons begged for another brother, Charles and Olivia picked out a bassinet with a soft yellow comforter and awaited the birth of their unnamed little girl.

And then on Oct. 27, 1978, Olivia gave birth after an incredibly speedy labor and, as the doctors lifted her newborn into her arms, she didn't even need to inspect the plumbing to know full well that son No. 6 had arrived. All 9 pounds and 7 ounces of him.

"He was," recalled Olivia a few weeks ago, "just so big. So big all over. Big hands. Big feet. Big head. Just really, really big, you know?"

Flash forward more than 21 years to Friday afternoon here, as Cosey Coleman commanded the attention of NFL scouts from several teams seeking offensive line help in the April draft. All one needed to know about Coleman, a standout at Tennessee who decided to forego his final season of college eligibility to enter the NFL, was that the coaches and scouts from more than 20 teams had requested interview sessions with him. It was, for Olivia Coleman and her youngest son, just the latest assurance that big is beautiful, too.

Typical of the offensive linemen invited to the league's predraft scouting combine, the class of blockers who assembled in the lobby of a downtown hotel here to head out for physical exams and the bench-press test were about as big as that house in the projects where Coleman spent the first 13 years of his life.

Woe be the blocker now who does not check into the combine weighing at least 300 pounds. All of the league's line coaches insist they prefer quickness and technique over raw size. Those same coaches, though, will opt every time for the 320-pound offensive tackle over the 285-pounder if everything else about the prospects' games are roughly equal.

Said St. Louis Rams assistant Jim Hanifan, one of the premier line coaches in league history. "It has become a big man's game, no doubt about it. These college kids get so much more weight training now, they can't help but be bigger. And they're not stupid, either. They see NFL games on television and they know the linemen are all 300 pounds. So they make sure they bulk up."

Case in point here Friday was Alabama offensive tackle Chris Samuels, arguably the No. 1 line prospect in this year's draft. Samuels played at between 288-295 pounds in college and was a terrific performer. For the combine, though, he checked in at 317 pounds and insisted that he will be an even better player with the additional 20-plus pounds.

Chris Samuels has been hitting the weight room and his mother's home cookin' hard since the end of the Tide's season.(Allsport)

Asked about the rapid and notable increase since the end of the Crimson Tide's season, Samuels cited the weight room work he did in preparation for the combine, and also his mother's delicious home-cookin'. A strong affinity for a mother's kitchen was among the common denominators for the several highly regarded line prospects interviewed on Friday by SportsLine.

No one dared refer to them, even quietly, on Friday as "mama's boys." But there is an inarguable maternal influence on many of the premier blocking prospects.

At her home in Mobile, Ala., Shirley Samuels spent much of her son's college career baking up care packages to send to him in Tuscaloosa. The pastor at A Time And Season church, and a woman who devotes much of her time ministering to Mobile's disadvantaged youth and running a Bible study class two days a week, Shirley Samuels will work late into the night in her kitchen to fix meals for her son.

"He's still my baby," she said, "and always will be. You know how mothers are about that. We're their biggest fans and, no matter how huge they are, we still fret over them."

Less than two months removed from what figures to be a $6 million-$8 million signing bonus for her son, who likely will be among the top five players selected on April 15, Shirley Samuels will not have to worry much longer. Ditto Olivia Coleman, whose son probably won't go quite as high but should still be a first-round selection as the consensus top guard in the draft's talent pool.

In fact, it is Cosey Coleman who worries a lot more about his mother these days and desperately wants to make a better life for her. Last July, after she went to the hospital doubled over in pain but was sent home with only a prescription, Olivia Coleman eventually was diagnosed as having a tumor on her kidney. Two days later, the cancerous kidney was removed.

Then as she was recovering and nearly ready to be released, Olivia developed pneumonia, which meant two more weeks in the hospital.

"Praise the Lord she came through everything OK," Cosey said on Friday. "She's pretty much held us all together. I don't know what would happen without her strength."

Indeed, she has been a veritable pillar for a family that relied upon her as its foundation.

Three of Coleman's brothers served time in prison, all on felony convictions, and one, Jerome, died in a New Orleans jail about a year ago. His father was in prison several times during the late 1960s and early '70s and the man who once provided for the family by driving a truck eventually left Olivia and the brood when Cosey was just seven years old.

Olivia twice moved her family to Georgia and twice the siren song of New Orleans brought her back there again. The third time, sensing that The Big Easy had become too dangerous a place to raise her youngest son, she headed to suburban Atlanta and stayed there. Cosey was 13 at the time and long since beyond the years when Olivia had to buy him a new football so the neighborhood kids would choose her too-chubby son for pickup games.

On the day he is drafted, Cosey Coleman plans to present his mother with a game ball and then tell her to retire.

"She learned too good how to be poor," Cosey said. "Way too good. Now I want her to learn good what it's like to have a little money."