Thank You, Drew Brees
Mar 15, 2021, 2:10 PM | Updated: May 22, 2024, 9:21 pm
(Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
(Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
As I was growing up, I found myself enamored by athletes and was in awe by their enormous talents.
Depending on which season was in action, baseball players, football players and basketball players ended up being a lot of the people that I looked up to.
I didn’t know any of them and really wasn’t that interested in their “life” more so their game. Sometimes these “heroes” did things that they shouldn’t and that would get out in the public. Rarely did it change my opinion of them as a player but sometimes it did as a person and their character.
As I got older I found myself still impressed by athlete’s and their talents but started to look less at them in idol roles but more just amazed by how they could do what they did at such a high level.
I started to work in sports and built relationships with athletes that I started to really like as “people” instead of sports stars. When you can find the combination of a great athlete, and a great person, then you find yourself one of those very special people.
To me one of those people is Drew Brees.
I have been a long time “fan” of Drew Brees as a quarterback and Drew Brees as a person. Drew decided that the time was right to call it a career over the weekend. After five seasons in San Diego and fifteen seasons in New Orleans Drew Brees is done.
When Drew Brees arrived in New Orleans nobody was quite sure what the Saints were getting. Brees arrived at a perfect time for him and the city of New Orleans. Sean Payton was just named the coach, the city was hit with one of the worst hurricanes in history with Katrina, and Brees was trying to figure out where his career was going.
In fifteen seasons with the Saints, Brees won a Super Bowl, made the Saints relevant just about every season and splashed his name near the top of every quarterback stat in NFL history.
The paring was perfect. The city needed a lift, Brees needed to find a home and the two needed each other and loved each other.
Drew Brees is beloved in New Orleans and the Saints will likely never be the same without him. He and Sean Payton created a legacy of accuracy, creative play calling and gave life to the “under-sized” quarterback.
Brees is one of the NFL’s greatest free agency signings ever.
Brees will still be seen to all of us on a national level as he will work football weekends for NBC. In New Orleans, Brees will continue to give back to a city that gave so much to him. They need each other, they are good for each other, and they bring out the best in one another.
It will be weird watching the Saints without Drew Brees. It will be strange at first watching Drew work football games.
We will all get used to the change. What won’t change is the love for Brees in New Orleans and Drew will keep on giving to that great city. All I can say is thank you Drew Brees. I enjoyed watching you play, I enjoyed watching you give back and I look forward to seeing your next chapter.
The Hall of Fame is a certainty for his work as a football player, but if there was such a thing, he would be a Hall of Fame good guy too.
Thanks, Drew.
