NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Drew Brees of three decades ago was disinclined to indulge fantasies of becoming a pro football star, believing instead that baseball was the sport he'd play in college.
“Look, I was 6-foot, 170 pounds,” the New Orleans Saints’ career passing leader said in an interview with The Associated Press, recalling his days at Westlake High School in Austin, Texas. “I wasn’t really the prototype of anything in football.”
Although he'd
grown up on gridirons as the grandson of an admired Texas high school football coach and won a state championship as Westlake's quarterback, Brees wasn't heavily recruited by prominent college football programs in his home state.
This weekend, the 47-year-old Brees enters the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, where his bronze bust will effectively become Exhibit A for the triumph of intangibles over measurables.
Whatever Brees lacked in physical stature, he made up for with discipline, intellect, perseverance, instincts and leadership during a 20-year NFL career highlighted by the second-most yards (80,358) and touchdowns (571) passing in league history — not to mention New Orleans' only Super Bowl title in the Saints' six decades of existence.
Sean Payton, who coached Brees in New Orleans and now is with Denver, marveled at Brees' ability to process information quickly, make adjustments at the line of scrimmage and execute.
“He was like A.I.," said Payton, whom Brees selected as his presenter in Canton. “That ability to process fast — like, elite fast — is a really rare gift. He could just multitask comfortably.”
Brees also worked obsessively on throwing mechanics — even hiring a personal throwing coach — and it showed in his accuracy and timing. He completed 67.7% of his passes, ranking third all-time — first among QBs with more than six NFL seasons. His single-season completion rates of 74.4% in 2018 and 74.3% in 2019 are the top two in NFL history.
Living by a maxim that equated failure with opportunity, Brees exhibited a knack for turning tribulation into triumph. His 53 game-winning drives rank third (tied with Ben Roethlisberger) and behind just Tom Brady (58) and Peyton Manning (54).
Brees retired after the 2020 season. Several years before that, players, coaches and executives around the NFL were already referring to him as a Hall of Famer.
“We all just expected he was going to go in in five years — first ballot, no questions asked,” said Saints general manager Mickey Loomis, whose tenure in New Orleans spanned all of Brees' 15 seasons with the club. “It's not a surprise."
The symmetry of Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans being the place where Brees bounced back from a career-threatening injury to his throwing shoulder provided yet another layer to the quarterback's story.
“How I ended up in New Orleans was just such an unlikely scenario,” Brees recalled. “And yet, it could not have been more perfect.”
The pinnacle was Brees' Super Bowl MVP performance against Indianapolis in February 2010 in Miami, marked by his second-half passing numbers of 19 completions on 20 attempts for 151 yards and two TDs. The postgame image of Brees holding his then-1-year-old first child, Baylen, as both grasped at fluttering confetti, is iconic in New Orleans.
Back in the Big Easy, that victory ignited cathartic, rapturous celebrations and set the stage for a victory parade as wild and well-attended as any held during Mardi Gras.
The Saints made the playoffs in nine of Brees’ 15 seasons in New Orleans. Since then, the club has gone 36-49 under three coaches without a postseason appearance.
Brees credits his athletic success to a childhood spent pursuing numerous sports, including baseball, basketball, soccer, tennis and cross country.
By high school, Brees saw himself as a potential prospect at shortstop or third base who could hit for average and power from the left side. The athlete he most admired was Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer Ted Williams, the inspiration behind Brees wearing the No. 9 throughout his NFL career.
When Brees tore knee ligaments during a high school football playoff game his junior season, he worried most about how missing baseball the following spring might jeopardize his scholarship prospects.
Baseball “is what I was hoping would be my path,” Brees recalled, adding that he was not bitter about not receiving football scholarship offers from Texas, where his uncle, Marty Akins, played quarterback, or Texas A&M, where his parents went to college.
None of the major football programs in Texas offered him one.
“I get it,” Brees said. “We won a state championship. I was 5A state offensive player of the year. But, I didn’t have a lot of the measurables.”
But Brees got an offer from then-Purdue coach Joe Tiller, who ran a pass-heavy spread offense. Intrigued, Brees accepted, moving about 1,100 miles from home to continue playing football.
Playing at Purdue transformed Brees into a bona fide NFL prospect.
“Had I gone to Texas, I would've handed the ball off to Ricky Williams; if I'd gone to A&M, I would've handed off to Dante Hall,” Brees said. “I go to Purdue and I’m throwing the ball 50 times a game."
In 2000, Brees led Purdue to just its second Rose Bowl and first in 34 years. He was a Heisman Trophy finalist and chosen Big Ten offensive player of the year for a second time.
After his selection at the top of the second round of the 2001 draft by the San Diego Chargers, Brees appeared in one game as a rookie.
He was benched three times in 2003, when he went 2-9 and had more interceptions (15) than touchdown passes (11).
That offseason, then-Chargers coach Marty Schottenheimer told Brees that he still believed in him, but warned that the organization planned to use its top overall draft pick in 2004 on a QB.
“Everything that I thought I knew, I reevaluated, and also my leadership skills and assertiveness,” Brees said. "So, I came back just on fire.”
The Chargers acquired Philip Rivers in a memorable draft-day trade involving Eli Manning, but Brees won back the starting job, going 11-4, leading the Chargers to the playoffs, and garnering the first of his 13 Pro Bowl nods.
Statistically, 2005 was another strong campaign for Brees, but the Chargers missed the playoffs at 9-7 and Brees' throwing shoulder was heavily damaged (torn labrum and partially torn rotator cuff) by an awkward hit during a scramble for a fumble.
Brees was due to become a free agent, and the Chargers didn't try to keep him.
At the time Brees signed with New Orleans in March 2006, his recovery from surgery in January had not yet progressed to where he could throw effectively.
He needed a team to take a leap of faith.
Miami had considered him, but balked. Payton, then a first-year NFL coach, and the Saints, who'd gone 3-13 while displaced to San Antonio in 2005, never wavered — and Brees was determined to make them right.
His approach became contagious.
Saints running back Alvin Kamara, who played with Brees during the QB's final four seasons, said Brees “treated every situation in practice, in the game, and in the film room, like it was the last moment ... the determining factor between winning and losing.”
"That bled throughout the whole team,” Kamara added.
Payton also encouraged Brees to explore the bounds of what he could do in a game.
He offered Brees the opportunity to call out protections from the line of scrimmage — something centers tend to do. Payton also let Brees call plays on the field when the Saints ran a no-huddle.
“He empowered me so much,” Brees said. “It made me that much more confident. And certainly I had that driving motivation to prove him right and to represent him."
During the 2007 preseason — before Saints greats Ricky Jackson, Willie Roaf or Morten Anderson had been enshrined in Canton — the Saints played in the Hall of Fame game.
Payton toured the hall with players and asked them if they noticed not a single Saint was represented. The coach then predicted that a player, perhaps several, from that 2007 squad would return to Canton as an inductee one day.
When Payton helps Brees on with his gold Hall of Fame jacket this weekend, the most accomplished player in Saints history will have made his old coach right one more time.
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