The first time Sean Payton took Drew Brees on a tour of New Orleans, he got so lost, he had to call someone for directions. The Saints head coach was ushering Brees around a city just months removed from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, hoping the quarterback would join a franchise that was perpetually stuck in the football mud. He wanted to make the best first impression possible, considering the grim circumstances, but instead ended up going so far astray that Brees’s wife, Brittany, began falling asleep in the back seat.
It’s probably a good thing they became sideline co-pilots in the end.
Brees entered New Orleans as a tentative superhero and will leave as the real thing. He came in the hopes of helping heal a broken city while he himself was on the mend, both from a shoulder injury that could have ended his career and from a shot to his ego from the San Diego Chargers, which dumped him on the side of the road like a fraying couch.
Now, No. 9 will walk out onto the Superdome turf for what will reportedly be his last-ever playoff run with an organization he built by hand. The former Purdue star quickly became the best quarterback in franchise history in just a few short years, well before shattering records that will keep until Patrick Mahomes’s hair begins to gray. Brees holds a host of NFL career honors, including the most passing yards, passing completions, consecutive games with a passing touchdown, and 5,000-yard seasons of anyone who’s ever lined up under center. Brees led the league in passing seven times, was Offensive Player of the Year twice, and has made it impossible to count the number of Pro Bowl nods he’s received on fingers and toes combined. More important than the accolades, however, is the fact that Brees helped dredge a football franchise up from the depths of utter despair.
The New Orleans Saints were founded in 1967 and didn’t win their first playoff game until the introduction of the camera phone in 2000. It would be another six years until Brees helped turned the Saints from a franchise hoping to be included in the “Teams Still In The Hunt” graphic on Fox to one of the best organizations in football. Not only did he finally secure a Lombardi Trophy for New Orleans, but he also led the team to a level of greatness even rabid fans could never conceive. From 2017-2020, the Saints amassed a league-leading 49-15 regular season record and won four consecutive NFC South titles, easily the best stretch of football in organization history. Brees himself also carried one of the statistically worst defenses in gridiron lore to seven wins, which is honestly more impressive than him winning Super Bowl MVP.
When Brees heads out of the tunnel for the 2021 playoffs, he’ll get a swan song worthy of a shoo-in Hall of Famer. The irony, of course, is that it probably couldn’t be a worse sendoff if it was planned by an Atlanta Falcons fan.
This amazing span of four-year football greatness has yet to end in a Super Bowl trip, making Brees’s final act a nerve-wracking panoply of torturous moments. Watching the Saints in the postseason since their Super Bowl run in 2009 has been a Mardi Gras parade of pain. New Orleans has endured more playoff losses with iconic nicknames than it has championship game appearances, despite heroic efforts by Brees to shoulder the team. From the “Beast Quake” heard round the world to a game simply known as “The No-Call,” no franchise since the 1990s Buffalo Bills has endured as much pure, undistilled heartache as the Saints. But it wasn’t so long ago that Saints fans would be absolutely ecstatic about being a perpetual playoff team and perennial No. 1 seed contender.
So it is that with Brees’s last goodbye, we must stop to appreciate how truly great he really was, even if his postseason ends in disaster once again.
We’ll likely never see a quarterback in New Orleans as good as Brees. My advice to Saints fans: Buy the ticket, take the ride, and cherish this denouement no matter how it ends.
Cory Gunkel is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C.
