by Drew Brees
As a football player who had experienced all different levels of the game, from flag football to the NFL, I was pretty well equipped to handle what was happening. Even if I hadn’t experienced an injury or a letdown to this extent before, I’d at least seen it happen to other guys. But it was hard for Brittany to see me in physical pain—and even worse, to try to understand why the team didn’t believe in me.
Through it all, with the strength of her faith in God and in me, she was able to trust me during that time of hurt and uncertainty about where we would wind up. She assured me she’d follow me anywhere, that we were a package deal. This bump in the road was just that—a bump. Brittany had grown up in the Midwest, so she could handle any weather situation. She had also moved around a lot as a child, so the idea of packing up again didn’t affect her much. She always says, “Home is not necessarily where you were born—you had no control of that. Home is where you make it.” She told me, “Don’t worry about me. You just concentrate on getting your shoulder better.” God knew I needed her then. Now we can see how the Lord used that time to deepen our love and to help us become more committed to each other than ever.
This experience really showed us the people in our lives who were with us through good times and bad. There were those I thought would have been there for sure, and they weren’t. There were also a lot of people I never thought would be there for me, and yet there they were. You can’t help but make a mental list and remember those people. When I was at my lowest—when I didn’t know if I’d ever play football again—I discovered the people who were truly there for me. At that point you realize family doesn’t only include blood. I have friends who are like brothers—the guys who stick around even when you’re not all smiles and good times. It turns out that family really means the people in your life who are always there, even when you are at your weakest.
Not Backup Material
When negotiations with the Chargers broke down, it was clear that free agency was my next step. At the beginning of that process, a lot of teams tend to throw their hats into the ring. In my case, as many as eight teams expressed an interest. At best, they were offering the same deal as the Chargers . . . meaning they wanted me to be their backup. In essence, their offers were saying, We like you, but we’re just not sure if you’re going to recover from this injury. We don’t want to make a big investment. If it worked out, great. If I didn’t come back, at least they hadn’t put too much on the line.
As I was going through my rehab, fighting to make my way back, I didn’t have my sights set on a backup position. That was not even an option in my eyes. I understood that I was considered a big risk after such a serious injury. But I believed God wasn’t finished with me in the NFL yet, and I was going to return better than before. I wanted somebody to share that vision—someone who would take a chance on me. So far, no team had done that.
In the midst of fielding offers, I continued the grueling rehab. In the end it came down to two teams: the Miami Dolphins and the New Orleans Saints. Over the past few years some people have speculated about what really happened during this process. Why did I choose one team over the other? Well, it wasn’t exactly a straight path east, all the way to New Orleans—there were some twists and turns along the way. I was perhaps more surprised than anyone about the way things turned out.
Chapter Seven
Miami vs. New Orleans
Football is all about timing. There’s the timing of the snap count. The speed and depth of the receiver running his route. The pause of the running back before he explodes toward the line.
When I was lying on a gurney in the training room during the last game of 2005, my shoulder shredded and my career in jeopardy, I couldn’t imagine how anything good could come out of something so awful. But as I would soon learn, sometimes the way God works is all about timing too. I had to wait. I had to work. But in the end, he had a clear purpose in everything that happened.
I’ll admit, his timing often felt slow—especially while I was going through rehab. When will I feel back to normal? When will I be able to play again? When will the right opportunity come my way? But no one ever said the Christian faith is about living according to your own terms or timetable. It’s about dropping anchor even when you’re in an unpredictable place. It’s about knowing that though things may not make sense on paper, you have to trust God to see the bigger picture. You have to choose to live from the heart and trust what you cannot see.
Less than a year after my shoulder injury, I was already starting to experience the unexpected good that can come out of adversity. That event took me to new places in my faith, as I knew God was sharpening me for a significant task down the road. It marked a new place of vulnerability and openness in my relationship with Brittany. It was a time of growing closer to her parents while I lived with them in Alabama during rehab. And in terms of my career, this incident allowed me to discover the people who were really on my team. In a strange way, I’m grateful for it, because it was a catalyst to change that needed to happen.
One of the most significant lessons I learned during that dark period of injury and rehab is this: if God leads you to it, he will lead you through it. Everything happens for a reason, and everything is part of his master plan. If you let adversity do its work in you, it will make you stronger. When you come out on the other side, you just may be amazed at the things God has allowed you to accomplish—things you might not have believed were possible.
God’s refining process is never easy. It’s kind of like a blacksmith creating a sword. The metal is strengthened when it is repeatedly put in the fire and then pounded with a hammer. But the end result is perfection. All the heat and pounding create a strength and beauty, not only on the outside, but especially on the inside. God sometimes puts us in the fire, and it’s going to hurt, but it will mold and shape us into the people he intends for us to be. When I went through that fire, I didn’t know what was ahead for me, and I didn’t know what the end result would be. I had to trust and believe that there was a purpose for all this and take things one day at a time.
The Obvious Choice
I’ve been asked on a number of occasions what happened between head coach Nick Saban, the Dolphins, and me. To the outside observer, it must have seemed really obvious what my choice would be when it came down to Miami or New Orleans. But there were other factors at play besides geography and football.
I met with Tom Condon, my agent, after things fell through on my contract with San Diego. Once the dust settled in the days prior to the start of free agency in early March 2006, it was clear that there were only two contenders who saw me as a starting quarterback in the NFL: the Dolphins and the Saints. Tom and I sat together and talked through the pros and cons of each.
“Here’s how I see it,” Tom said. “For New Orleans, you have to factor in that the city has just been through the biggest natural disaster in the history of the country. More than 80 percent of the city was underwater. I don’t know how many good places there are to live. The whole city was devastated—it still is.” That was no exaggeration. At the time, the team had been relocated to San Antonio, Texas, and there had been talk of moving the team permanently. Plans had even been made to tear down the Superdome. The previous season had been played entirely on the road—San Antonio, Baton Rouge, even New Jersey. Tom went on, “Now, they have a brand-new coaching staff—but there are a lot of unknowns.” It was true: a lot of good things were being said about Sean Payton, but he had never been a head coach before. Then there was the clincher: “Drew, the overall reputation of the organization is not good. The team has been pretty dysfunctional for a long time. I like the general manager, Mickey Loomis, but he is going to have a hard time attracting talented players to come down there.”
If you would have asked me in 2004, before Hurricane Katrina, “What one team in the league would you least want to play for?” I probably would have said the New Orleans Saints. That’s not a knock against the city. I had been through New Orleans
once before, for a wedding, and the only thing I saw aside from the ceremony was Bourbon Street since our hotel was right there. That was my concept of the city.
My impression of the team wasn’t much better. I didn’t know many of the players personally, but I’d heard about the team’s reputation from other players in the league and observed it from afar. Most people viewed the Saints as a dead-end organization at the time. When you thought of New Orleans, you just didn’t think of a great atmosphere conducive to winning and building a championship-caliber team. So before we even started talking, I had an overwhelmingly negative view of the club.
After a successful 2000 season, in which the Saints won their first playoff game in franchise history, they followed it up with four consecutive mediocre seasons from 2001 to 2004. The Saints had a lot of talent, but they couldn’t figure out how to win consistently. They were streaky and unpredictable. They then went 3–13 in 2005, the Katrina year. Now here they were knocking on my door in 2006. Tom was trying to go through the pros and cons of New Orleans with me, but it was hard to see anything but the cons. The assignment was fraught with challenges and downsides—the rebuilding needed in the city, the uncertainty about the future of keeping the organization in New Orleans, and the fact that this was not where I had imagined starting a family. Besides, from a football perspective, it just didn’t seem like a great prospect.
“Then there’s Miami,” Tom said. “First of all, there’s the obvious advantage: you’d get to live in Miami. It’s a great city, a great climate.” He had a point. Plus, there was no rebuilding needed there. “Second, there’s an unbelievable tradition with the Dolphins. They’ve won Super Bowls. They have a great ownership structure. And Nick Saban has a reputation as a winner.” Saban was a young head coach with a lot of energy and ideas, and he had turned the team around the previous season, his first as an NFL head coach. They were 9–7 in 2005, and every indication was that they were going to win more. Tom went on, “Saban is an extremely talented defensive coach, so you know he’s going to take care of that side of the ball. And you’ve also got superb coaches on the offensive side. Mike Mularkey, the offensive coordinator, has head coaching experience and is running the same offense you did in San Diego. Jason Garrett is one of the best up-and-coming young offensive minds in the league, plus the O line coach is your old O line coach from San Diego, Hudson Houck. You’ve got familiarity there.”
On paper, the obvious choice was Miami. It was an organization on the rise. They wanted to win. And they were coming after me.
Daunte Culpepper was another highly regarded quarterback looking for a new team that year. He had torn up his knee in 2005. (Incidentally, Dr. Andrews had operated on both of us.) The consensus around the league was that one of us would play for Miami and the other would play for New Orleans. The question was “Who will go where?”
In reality, the Saints really weren’t interested in Culpepper, and I knew it. Rumor had it they would be drafting a quarterback with a high pick in the first round if they didn’t get me. I also knew that the Dolphins preferred me over Culpepper, in part because in order to get Culpepper, they would have to trade a high draft pick to Minnesota, whereas getting me was free. However, both teams were going to negotiate hard and use the fact that Culpepper was out there to their advantage. I figured it was a matter of trying to get the deal done and making it work financially that would move the negotiations with the Dolphins forward.
I had all but made up my mind by the time I talked with Saints head coach Sean Payton. He had a tough sell—you’re not going to attract sought-after free agents with “Hey, come to our city that was destroyed six months ago.” The organization had just moved back into the facility that had been taken over by the National Guard for several months. There was no guarantee that the Superdome would be playable by the time the season started. They were hoping it would be ready by the third game, but no one knew for sure yet.
I had never spoken with Sean Payton before, and I knew I needed to have a conversation with him before making any decision about New Orleans. Our first conversation occurred while I was going through the Arby’s drive-through in Birmingham, and I realized right away that I liked his personality. I appreciated what he had to say about the team and the direction they were going. The business side of me said it made sense to use a New Orleans visit as leverage against Miami. But the loyalist side of me, the more powerful side, was reminding me that the Saints were the first team to throw their hat in the ring. I could feel that they truly wanted me and would very much appreciate a chance. (I found out later that they were somewhat shocked I decided to make the visit, under the circumstances.) So instead of jumping for Miami, which was my first inclination, I decided I owed it to myself to take a trip to New Orleans and at least see it with my own eyes. I had no idea what I was going to see when I touched down at Louis Armstrong International.
Tom and I agreed that I would take a trip to both New Orleans and Miami and then make the call. I still felt pretty confident I’d ultimately end up in South Florida, but I wanted to give each team a fair shot. Apparently the Dolphins also thought the idea of my playing for the Saints was pretty far-fetched. Who in their right mind would pick New Orleans over Miami?
They believed they were in the driver’s seat.
Big Trip to the Big Easy
The Saints booked a visit for me in early March, and I committed to going there first. As soon as the Dolphins heard about it, they called and asked me to fly to Miami before that. I told them I was a man of my word and I’d make the trip to Miami after my visit to New Orleans. On the night before I left for New Orleans, Miami called again. They said they wanted to fly in and have breakfast in Birmingham before I visited the Saints.
Obviously New Orleans was not thrilled with that, but I wanted to get as much time as I could with each team. Here was an opportunity to sit and talk with Miami right on my doorstep, so why not? Brittany and I drove to a little pancake house close to the Five Points area of Birmingham. Nick Saban, the head coach, and Randy Mueller, the general manager, met us there.
Nick was up-front with me. He told me straight out that he was interested in having me play for the Dolphins. His personality is not real warm, and you struggle to ever get a smile out of him. He’s a hard-nosed, stoic kind of guy, and he did most of the talking at the breakfast, as I recall. He wasn’t trying to sell me on his team—he just explained things. “We have a great owner, a great staff, a great team, and a great organization behind us. We also have great facilities.” He then focused on Brittany. “And we have great communities and great places to raise a family. I have a house on the Intracoastal Waterway and a boat. When you visit, we’ll get you both out on the water and show you around.” Like any good recruiter, he directed those statements right at my wife. If you can win over the woman in the player’s life, you’ve won the recruiting battle.
Nothing really eventful happened at that breakfast other than getting the chance to meet both men in person. We talked. We ate. It was primarily an opportunity for them to get in front of me and let me think about Miami as I talked with New Orleans. I think that was part of the game. After breakfast Brittany and I left for the airport and headed to New Orleans.
I remember flying into New Orleans that day. It’s a flight I love now, soaring over the bayou and the swamp, with the beautiful cypress trees and the waterways below. But that day I stared dismally out the window. It was crummy weather—rainy and drizzly—and as we got under the thick clouds, I caught my first glimpse of the area. Most of the trees looked like they’d been chopped off at the top, beheaded by Katrina.
Oh, boy, I thought. This is going to be interesting.
As soon as we landed, we were in a limo on our way to the team facility. Mickey and Sean seemed to be making sure Brittany and I were constantly talking so there was as little looking out the window as possible. I also recall that the limo had the darkest tint on the windows I had ever seen. We could barely see out. I’m pretty sure that
was the point—to prevent us from being scared off by all the devastation.
For dinner that night we went to Emeril’s restaurant. That’s one thing about New Orleans: no matter how bleak things seem, you can always count on a great meal and good people. We sat at the chef’s table, which was actually in the kitchen. Sean and his wife, Beth, were there, along with Mickey and Melanie, now his wife. We were joined by some other members of the coaching staff, including quarterbacks coach Pete Carmichael, who was the quality control coach in San Diego the entire time I was there. I had a great relationship with Pete. He was one of the people I knew believed in me.
Part of their philosophy was to treat Brittany and me like family. The discussion at dinner didn’t turn to free agency or the contract—we just enjoyed the evening and got to know each other. They promised to show us some neighborhoods they thought would be conducive to raising a family. Brittany fell in love with Beth and Mel.
Brittany and I spent the night at the Loews Hotel downtown. Some people from the community had sent flowers and gift baskets to welcome us. That night Brittany pulled me into the bathroom and ran the shower while we talked. She was convinced there could be listening devices in the room, and she wanted to make sure the sound of the water would drown out what we said. Okay, so maybe we’d been watching too many spy movies lately. The truth is, we were welcomed there with open arms.
The next day I met with Sean to discuss the offense. He and the crew had put together a highlight video with some of my best plays from the past couple of years. We talked about the specifics of the offense and how I saw myself fitting in. Everything he said to me seemed to communicate one central message: We want you here. We believe in you, and we are as confident in your ability to come back and lead this team to a championship as you are.
“I’m going to take everything you like and everything you’re good at, and we’re going to install it,” Sean said. “We’re going to put it in our offense. We’re going to develop this thing together. I want to put you in the best position to lead this offense by executing what you are comfortable with and have confidence running. I’ll have the final say, but you’re going to have a lot of input.”