'Tis graduation season for a great many and quite shortly school’s out for summer.
It's out for Indianapolis Colts first-round pick Kwity Paye, a notion that dawned on him during organized team activities this past week, as the No. 21 selection of the 2021 NFL Draft realizes the focus going forward is solely on football.
"It's like, now I wake up and be like, 'Man, I have no school. I have nothing to do but focus on football.' It's fun now," Paye said this week, via the Colts team website’s JJ Stankevitz. "Just to be able to focus on one thing, yeah that's cool."
For the 22-year-old Paye and a great many NFL rookies this year, years before and years ahead, this is no doubt a time in which the concept of football as a profession is truly settling in.
Left behind for Paye is his time at Michigan and the balance of the classroom and the football field.
Now, he's looking to add extra punch to the Colts defensive front and, given his draft status and early OTA reports, is likely to start.
By Paye's account, he's jumped headfirst into the playbook and is picking the brains of his veteran teammates. So, while school is out, the learning's hardly been halted.
Now, he just has one focus and that's showing out for his upcoming rookie season.
"I feel like I always took pride in what I did on the football field," Paye said. "Now I just get to be a better version of myself because I have more time in the day to really hone in on my craft."
