Aaaaaand, we’re back.
Kind of. Sure, NFL training camp is the calm before the storm, but it’s activity rather than talk, and in a football sense at least, the summer break is done and classes have resumed.
As of right now, every NFL team is fully in session.
Different teams have different schedules and rookies work to their own timeframe, but here we are at last. It’s July 26, which means if you’re an NFL player, you’ve reported to camp and are ready to work – so off we go again on the merry old cycle of America’s football obsession.
The way the NFL calendar operates may not be deliberately designed to toy with our inner rhythms, but it has that effect anyway.
The frenetic nature of the postseason, when there is no room for pause and where long-held dreams go to die, gives way to all those endless months we’ve just lived through, when the languid pace of summer makes it sometimes seem like football will never come back around.
It does, of course, always, and the six weeks of anticipation that sit just ahead are some of a football follower’s most precious times, or should be.
This is July-meets-August-meets-early September — wondrous days when everyone has some hope, where no one’s team has suffered an embarrassing skid, no one’s quarterback has revealed himself to be a dud, no squad has been beset by an injury crisis and the boundless possibilities that sports fans talk themselves into are all still real and present.
If the summer is so frustrating for football lovers because there is simply nothing to do except await snippets of news — that for some reason seem to come in clusters and then leave days and weeks of void — this next period is one where there is necessary activity to attend to.
This is when those of savvy mind have already gotten their fantasy game rumbling into life, with close attention paid to early training camp movements, a few savvy sleepers stashed on a scrap of paper somewhere and a close bead on which rookies appear to be currying early favor.
For those whose sartorial style is more about loyalty than elegance, there are new jerseys to be bought, and there are game schedules to be memorized, of course, to attempt to avoid unthinkable conflicts with evil disrupters of viewing pleasure such as weddings and shopping trips and kids’ sports games.
More than anything, this window serves as a delightful teaser for the approaching time when all the transactional quirks and developments that played themselves out over the summer can actually be brought into being.
That’s why the timings of NFL life are so mischievous. I’ll wager good money that there were moments over the past few months when you wondered why more wasn’t happening in the NFL-verse, ruminating how a league so big and all-encompassing could provide days so bereft of headline-worthy activity.
Those sentiments are a product of the reality that football is such a part of American life that it takes nothing more than a couple of quiet afternoons on the gossip mill for something to feel off.
It was, in truth, an offseason that was stacked with incident and intrigue. It just didn’t always feel like it because, well, six months is a heck of a long time.
But just think of all the things to have taken place since we saw Matthew Stafford and the Los Angeles Rams lift the Vince Lombardi Trophy in February.
Tom Brady completed his heady cycle of retirement rumors, official retirement, unretirement rumors and official unretirement, all in the span of a few dramatic weeks.
Aaron Rodgers’ relationship with the Green Bay Packers finally found some resolution when he signed a contract that will pay him darn near a million bucks a week and seems to ensure he will remain a one-team guy forever.
A couple of big-time bromances got busted up, with Davante Adams and Tyreek Hill proving that wide receiver market is an absolute sizzler – certainly at its top end – finding themselves new parking spots in Las Vegas and Miami, plus a truckload of money.
QBs got paid en masse, Kyler Murray being the latest and Lamar Jackson the rarest of exceptions, with that gilded group headlined even more than Rodgers’ deal by the eye-popping package given to Deshaun Watson by the Cleveland Browns, despite the lingering uncertainty surrounding his immediate availability.
There are battles for starting spots in Seattle (Drew Lock and Geno Smith) and Pittsburgh (Mitchell Trubisky and Kenny Pickett), Baker Mayfield is a Carolina Panther, while Russell Wilson will be breathing unusual air, with the altitude of Denver and a new employer for the first time in the NFL career.
Over the coming days there’ll be meetings and physicals and team-bonding exercises. There’ll be a variety of workouts and an array of press conferences.
There will be rumors and whispers of guys who’ve made strides and those who’ve regressed, of brewing competitions and shakeups of the status quo.
There will be a lot said and a lot of work done, and just like that, the summer silence will be blasted away, replaced by a relentless new rhythm where football becomes everything again, and stays that way until February.
