The new league year is here and I want to tell you something.

Right now, across the country, players who agreed to terms with new teams over the last forty-eight hours are making phone calls. Some of them are calling their parents. Some are calling their wives or their college coaches or the high school teammate who told them to keep going when it was hard. They are saying: I got a deal. They are saying it in the voice they use when they are trying to sound calm and cannot quite manage it.

That is what today is. That is what the new league year actually is.

The numbers in the contract mean security for families. The cities in the contract mean new schools, new neighborhoods, new neighbors. The teams in the contract mean new coaches to convince, new teammates to earn trust from, a new locker room to figure out the culture of from scratch.

Here is what I love about the players who are signing today: every single one of them believes this is the year. The guard who just signed with a team that went 7-9 last year believes this is the year. The receiver who left a Super Bowl contender for a rebuilding organization believes this is the year. That belief is not naivety. It is the thing that makes professional football players different from the rest of us. The rest of us are realistic about long odds. They are not.

Kenneth Walker won the Super Bowl MVP last month. One hundred and thirty-five yards rushing on the biggest stage in the sport. He signed with Kansas City this week. The ring is already on his finger and he is already proving something new, to a new team, in a new city. That is the sport. Nobody ever stops having something to prove. The moment you win it, the next thing begins.

The new league year is here. All thirty-two teams genuinely believe they are going to be better this year. Some of them are right.

What a sport.