His parents weren’t the only ones who wondered why he’d give up a secure living for such a small chance to do something rare. Mwansa told his story to fellow undrafted rookies Bam Martin-Scott and Tuasivi Nomura, and it dawned on them that their backgrounds are very different, since they were playing at American colleges while he was pursuing his dream after working a full shift at an accounting firm.

“And they’re like, you were an accountant, and we’ve played 11 years of football,” Mwansa said. “They were like, you know, that’s crazy. But I had an itch. I had to scratch it. I had a dream, and it’s not something which you can look back at life and go ‘Oh, I wish I did that’ and whatever, so it wasn’t really a sacrifice to me, it was an investment into my future, really. Hopefully, I can make that pay off, and it’s just something which is incredible for me, like this whole process. To just have the opportunity to do something which I wanted to seek.

“Football, it’s not a big sport in the UK, and it’s growing globally because it’s an amazing sport. But it’s something that I went out to seek myself, and then I had a passion for it, and then I continued to try and work and get better, while working a 9-to-5 job. It did seem hard, and it was getting very expensive. I was not getting a lot of sleep, driving all around the UK to play football. It’s not easily accessible.”

But Mwansa was determined.

“It’s a process which you eradicate all senses of security in your current life to go and chase something which definitely might not land for me,” he said. “I literally came here with a suitcase and a dream. And it was four months of work and sometimes you’re looking at your bank account thinking ‘What?’

“But you just have to keep going and just know that with the work you put in. Having the faith is all good, but faith without works is dead, and you just know that with the work you’ve put in, and you’ve been trying. I know that God put something on my heart, which may seem impossible to to achieve. But you keep going.”

That led to his first trip to the United States, for a 10-week training camp at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., where he worked with coaches there and one of the best pass-rushers in NFL history.