National Post (National Edition)
Legend born on bayou
NEW ORLEANS STILL ENAMOURED WITH ITS ‘COOL BREES’
As Moses Malone was to Larry Bird and Magic Johnson in the early 1980s NBA and Steve Yzerman to Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux in the late-1980s NHL, so has Drew Brees been to Tom Brady and Peyton Manning this century in the NFL.
Three’s a crowd, apparently, when it comes to any sport’s most legendary performers of a given era.
Yet unlike the above generational superstars, or perhaps any others in modern times, Brees’ legend really does extend far beyond the playing surface on game days.
Never mind for a moment that in Year 18 of his pro career the New Orleans Saints quarterback really has been better than ever in numerous, meaningful measures. And never mind that by the best bellwether barometers he’s now the most prolific and accurate passer in NFL history.
Fact is, Brees is as beloved in the city in which he lives and plays as any other North American pro athlete ever. Brees is not just a New Orleans sporting icon. He is a New Orleans icon, period. A guy who really could run for mayor and beat anyone in a landslide. Or so the locals say.
And so with one of the best regular seasons in the Saints’ 52-year history approaching a close and with the native of Austin, Texas, just a few weeks from his 40th birthday Jan. 15, it’s a good time for refreshers on why Brees is the man he is, off the field and on.
The Big Easy’s love affair with Brees began just half a year after hurricane Katrina chewed up and spit out large sections of the city in August 2005.
That Brees’ body was more or less in the same figurative condition was coincidental, if serendipitous. He’d just wrecked his throwing shoulder three months earlier in his last game with the San Diego Chargers, the team that had drafted him out of Purdue University in 2001. While trying to recover a fumble, the top of his right throwing arm got hammered by a defender. Result: shoulder dislocation and tears to his rotator cuff and labrum.
Some doctors surmised the damage was inoperable.
“It was a career-threatening right-shoulder dislocation, which for a quarterback is the worst injury, besides a broken neck, that you could have,” Brees told 60 Minutes in 2010.
At the time, March 2006, Brees was a free agent. Only two teams gave him a serious look: the Miami Dolphins and the Saints. Dolphins doctors gave him a 25 per cent chance of recovery.
Newly named Saints head coach Sean Payton needed a supremely intelligent and accurate quarterback to digest and run his thick offensive playbook. In Brees, he saw those attributes, plus a player overflowing with guts and competitiveness.
“If someone was going to be able to come back from an injury like that, it was going to be Drew Brees,” Payton once said.
As the story goes, he picked up Brees and his wife Brittany at the airport and meant to drive the young couple only through the least damaged parts of New Orleans. Only they got lost.
“Here we are, driving down roads and seeing homes literally moved off their foundations, cars that are flipped upside down in people’s living rooms, boats on top of roofs — I mean, it was the worst of the worst,” Payton said. “And I thought to myself, ‘I might as well just drive him straight to Miami. We have no shot at signing him.’ ”
The opposite transpired even with legitimate concerns in New Orleans that the Saints would be forced to relocate, what with so many residents permanently relocating themselves and the Saints’ home stadium, the Superdome, heavily damaged.
“What most people might see as devastation and ‘I want no part of this,’ we saw this as an opportunity and a challenge,” Brees said of what he and Brittany eventually concluded.
“This was the only team that really looked at me and said, ‘We trust you. We have confidence in you. We believe in you.’ Sometimes all you need is someone to believe in you in order to maybe be able to accomplish something you never thought you could.”
Brees signed with the Saints. His shoulder soon healed. And in 2006 he and Payton led the franchise in their first season together to only its sixth playoff berth in 40 years of existence.
This had been a franchise often nicknamed the “Ain’ts” in derision because it was so often so bad. Some fans infamously wore bags on their heads to games to avoid being recognized. The locals had suffered through 26 losing seasons in the club’s first 39 campaigns in the NFL.
All that changed once Payton and Brees arrived. Three years later, they went all the way.
Asked by Katie Couric of CBS News on the eve of Super Bowl XLIV which was more true — did Brees save New Orleans or did New Orleans save him? — the quarterback answered:
“I’m gonna say New Orleans helped save me. Really. At that point in my career and in my life and early in our marriage where you’re just trying to establish yourself, (there were) so many unknowns. It’s a scary feeling, especially at that time with my injury and so many doubts. ‘Hey, am I ever going to play football again?’ ”
Getting his second chance in devastated New Orleans was “destiny,” Brees told Couric.
“I feel like we have fate and destiny on our side. There’s a piece of everybody that wants us to win this Super Bowl. And I can promise you there’s no other city or community or people that deserve it more than New Orleans.”
Hours after that interview aired, Brees went out and led the Saints to victory in Super Bowl XLIV, completing 32 of 39 passes for 288 yards and two touchdowns without an interception as the Saints rallied from a 17-16 fourth-quarter deficit to beat Manning and the Indianapolis Colts 31-17. Brees was the MVP.
“You win a Super Bowl and you walk together forever,” Brees said of his kinship with southern Louisiana. “We accomplished that. You feel like there’s a brotherhood that will always be here.”
Ever since, people in New Orleans have come to revere Brees, nicknaming him “Cool Brees” or “Breesus.”
And not just because he helped bring them their longcoveted Super Bowl championship. Rather for all he also did for the area during the post-hurricane rebuild. Brees and Brittany helped not only philanthropically by raising and donating millions of dollars through their charitable foundation, but Brees himself literally helped rebuild homes.
In 2010, 60 Minutes profiled Brees and his off-field humanitarian efforts, as did numerous magazines and newspapers with in-depth features.
The city’s rebirth seemed inextricably tied to that of the Saints franchise and Brees was the poster boy.
He personally committed or helped raise US$6 million through his charitable foundation to rebuild New Orleans parks and refurbish schools.
“It was so needed,” Payton said. “I mean, the cars were going the other direction. They weren’t coming in, they were leaving. And so here came hope. That will never go away, what he did.”
Less than two years later, the NFL’s ultimate feel-good story turned mighty sour.
From 2011-12, Payton and the Saints found themselves embroiled in one of the worst scandals in NFL history, when it was discovered Payton and defensive co-ordinator Gregg Williams — now the Cleveland Browns interim head coach — approved a program that for years had seen Saints defenders motivated by and rewarded with cash bounties for various levels of injurious hits on opposing principal players. “Bountygate,” as it was dubbed, was a shocking, revolting disregard for basic decency and sportsmanship.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Williams from the league indefinitely (a punishment overturned a year later) and Payton for the entire 2012 season.
That controversy, a shocking upset loss in the 2011 divisional playoffs at San Francisco as well as talent drop-offs at key positions all contributed to derail what might have become a Saints dynasty.
In 2012 and from 2014-16, the Saints failed to have a winning record and fielded de fences some years that statistically ranked among the worst in NFL history.
All the while, one player kept performing at the highest level, often singlehandedly keeping the Saints in ball games and from becoming a laughingstock again, which might have brought out bag-headed fans and that dreaded “Ain’ts” nickname again.
Brees.
Last year, talent upgrades to the New Orleans offensive line and backfield paid off big time, as did a more talented defence that suddenly could stop people.
The Saints went 11-5 in 2017, made the playoffs for the first time since 2013 and beat Carolina in the wildcard round — before losing to the Vikings on the “Minnesota Miracle” to just miss reaching the NFC championship game.
This season, the Saints are 13-2, the best record in the NFL. They have already clinched their second consecutive NFC South Division title — a franchise first — and have nailed down a firstround playoff bye.
For a long time this season, it looked as though Brees might just capture his first league MVP award after 18yearsasapro.
That’s unlikely to happen now as Kansas City Chiefs first-year starting wunderkind quarterback Patrick Mahomes seems to have surged in front in that race, becoming only the third NFL quarterback to pass for 4,000 yards and 40 touchdowns in a single season
But so what if Brees doesn’ t win the MVP award this year or ever? By any measure, he’s now the most prolific and accurate passer in NFL history.
An 11-time Pro Bowl selection, Brees has led the league in most passing yards seven times, highest completion percentage four times, most completions six times, most touchdown throws four times and highest passer rating once (in 2009, the Super Bowl season).
What’s more, since Brees joined Payton in New Orleans in 2006, no NFL team has gained more total yards or passing yards than the Saints — all while allowing the fewest sacks in the league. That last stat says a lot more about Brees’ quick decision making than the quality of the offensive lines he has played behind.
“I always try to be a little bit better each and every year and, to me, sometimes that’s not reflected in the stats,” Brees said a few weeks ago.
“Maybe sometimes it is, but of course I’ve set personal goals. I have personal aspirations. Many I write down, but it’s all within the framework of what helps me put my team in the best position to win. That’s an approach I take every off-season and this off-season was no different
“I feel 25 … I mean, mind over matter. You cannot stop the aging process, but I think you can delay it a little. I am having fun playing the game and I have a definite routine. It takes a lot of time. Not just the time to prepare for the opponent, talking film work and studying the plan, practice time and all that, but the time it takes to recover and take care of your body and the maintenance and the weight room and all those things.
“I like where I am at, but you feel like there are still strides to be made.”