Ahhhhh, it feels so good to write again.

For those who know me only from my work in football on TV on both FOX NFL Sunday (real life) and my Emmy, Oscar, Grammy & Nobel Peace Prize-worthy work on HBO’s Ballers (even realer life), I got my break in this business as a writer for a tiny hometown paper named The New York Post.

I think the year was 1995 or ’96 but I’m not quite sure (I’ve been hit in the head a lot since then, but more on that later) and I got a job covering the NFL for… wait for it… wait for it… a whopping 9 grand a year. That’s it. Just $250 a column on some Sundays.

But I’m grateful for this part of my grind, my learning experience, this adversity of being broker than broke. Adversity, however, is a gift. I learned the magic of a LEAD! If I didn’t grab my editor right off the bat with a great lead or a hook, I wasn’t getting published and I wasn’t getting paid (and then I wasn’t paying my bills).

I learned to not be vanilla, to ask questions that would garner great answers, and as a result built a conversational approach invoking a connection with a player or coach that gave readers a very rare and inside look at the story’s subject.

I am incredibly grateful for the tools I learned from being a writer because they have transferred to everything else I’ve since built in my career.

On FOX NFL Sunday, I absolutely must grab the viewer with a lead right out of the gate. Hell, I have to come out swinging just to get my own teammates Terry, Howie, Jimmy, Curt and Strahan not to drift away in an ADD haze if my delivery or info sucks.

Every feature I’ve done for FOX has included me securing an exclusive subject or angle OR showing a side of the person the public has rarely seen.

My job at FOX, and now here at The Athletic, is to get you guys, the reader, connected to a subject in a way you haven’t seen before.

I don’t stand for coach-speak or vanilla, and I have the relationships to call bullshit in a way others can’t.

I will also try to open you guys up more to what’s behind a subject’s rib cage and the six inches between the ears.

The last few years of my life, I’ve spent my weeks working with former combat veterans and former NFL players who need a new team, a new perspective for when their uniforms come off (via a charity I started three years ago called MVP: Merging Vets & Players).

We teach you how to be proud of your scars, how to change the narrative from “oh man I’m different” to “Ya damn right I’m different!” We reinforce in both our combat veterans and former pro athletes that just because their mission ended doesn’t mean their greatness has and the only way to do that is by connecting where others cannot.

I’m a different guy now than the last time I wrote (I’m still a wild, crazy, foul-mouthed bastard) but I now feel it’s my job in life to be of service to others. It’s my job here at The Athletic to be of service to you.

I will begin each week with a mailbag answering questions from you that can include anything you want. Don’t hold back, I can take it — we’ve got me on the proper meds these days. I will finish the week with a Q&A with a player, coach, star, whoever will be a hell of an entertaining read.

It’ll be different. It’ll be fun. If it isn’t, call my ass out in my mailbag. We are walking this walk together! I am here to serve you.

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(Photo by Noel Vasquez/Getty Images)