Saints QB Drew Brees retires from NFL

March 11, 2006 — Freshly minted New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton launched into a recruiting pitch that altered the course of the franchise, and the city itself, forever.

The Saints wined and dined Drew Brees, a free-agent quarterback coming off a shoulder injury so debilitating Brees himself thought his career might be over. They drove through deserted, devastated parts of New Orleans that appeared untouched since Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell across the region six months earlier.

The Miami Dolphins disregarded Brees and his shoulder as damaged goods, so Payton and the Saints committed to No. 9 a few days later; and for 15 years they put together one of the greatest offenses in NFL history — turning a pitiful franchise into a Super Bowl champion and a perennial contender.

And now, after all those memorable moments, the Saints’ greatest player is hanging up his cleats.

Brees, 42, announced Sunday his playing career is over, making the announcement on the 15th anniversary of his signing with the Saints.

The formal announcement, which Brees posted to Instagram, featured his four children sitting on their couch to break the news.

“After 15 years on the Saints and 20 years in the NFL, our dad is finally gonna retire so he can spend more time with us,” the Brees children said in the video.

Brees accompanied the short clip with a caption that read, “After 20 years as a player in the NFL and 15 years as a Saint, it is time I retire from the game of football. Each day, I poured my heart & soul into being your quarterback. Til the very end, I exhausted myself to give everything I had to the Saints organization, my team, and the great city of New Orleans.

“We shared some amazing moments together, many of which are emblazoned in our hearts and minds and will forever be a part of us. You have molded me, strengthened me, inspired me, and given me a lifetime of memories. My goal for the last 15 years was striving to give to you everything you had given to me and more. 

“I am only retiring from playing football. I am not retiring from New Orleans. This is not goodbye, rather a new beginning. Now my real life’s work begins!”

Brees walks away from the game as one of the most accomplished players the NFL has ever seen, spending 15 of his 20 pro seasons with the Saints and rewriting the record books in the process.

His retirement felt imminent from the waning moments of the Saints’ divisional round loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Jan. 17.

As the seconds ticked down and Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady kneeled out the clock, backup Saints quarterback Jameis Winston walked up to Brees, who had been standing alone on the sideline with his hands resting on his hips and his helmet still on. Winston hugged him, telling Brees how much he admired him and that he loved him.

“You’re still the greatest quarterback to ever play this game,” Winston said. “The things that you overcame this year that people don’t know, and they really don’t care, but we know. And we know how hard you fought.”

After the final buzzer, while he ran off the field, Brees blew his three traditional kisses up toward his family.

But then he broke from his norms.

With tears welled in his eyes, he turned back over his left shoulder, taking one last look at the nearly empty Superdome.

While walking off the field, New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees (9) looks back at the stadium for a second after the 30-20 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Sunday, Jan. 17, 2021. 

PHOTO BY DAVID GRUNFELD DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

• • •

Brees — a surefire first-ballot Hall of Famer — has long maintained he wanted to retire on his own terms.

“Listen, it’s not a matter of if I can still play. I know I can still play,” Brees said in January 2020. “And if I really wanted to, I could probably play for another three or four years.”

But still being able to play wasn’t the point. It was being able to play at a high caliber for the team that took a chance on him in 2006.

The latter wasn’t an issue. When Brees contemplated retirement after the 2019 season, Saints general manager Mickey Loomis said he “obviously” wanted Brees back for 2020 — if that’s what Brees wanted. Ultimately, Brees returned for one last season, leading the Saints to another NFC South title and a run to the divisional round of the playoffs.

Brees walks away from the game holding most of the NFL’s major career and single-season records for quarterbacks. For the records he doesn’t hold, he’s near the top of the charts.

No. 9 finished his NFL career with 80,358 yards passing, 571 passing touchdowns, 752 yards rushing, 25 rushing touchdowns, 74 yards receiving and one receiving touchdown in 287 career games. He played in 228 regular-season games in a Saints uniform, starting all of them, and led New Orleans to a 142-86 record in the regular season.

Brees holds three of the four major all-time quarterback records: yards passing (80,358), passes completed (7,142) and passing attempts (10,551).

He momentarily held the fourth major record, passing touchdowns. But a bout with 11 fractured ribs and a collapsed lung that forced him to miss four games last season allowed Brady to climb ahead. Brees’ career ends with 571 passing touchdowns.

Brees’ name is etched atop the record books for several single-season benchmarks too: passes completed (471 in 2016), yards passing per game (342.3 in 2011), completion percentage (74.4% in 2018). And in 2011, he broke the single-season yards passing mark at 5,476 before Peyton Manning beat him out by a single yard two seasons later.

Franchise-wise, Brees holds the vast majority of the Saints’ records for a quarterback — the good and the bad. The only three he doesn’t own are for times sacked in a single game, single season and career.

“When you think of the Saints, you think of Drew Brees first,” left tackle Terron Armstead said in 2019.

Brees had been with the Saints since 2006 and in the NFL since 2001, when the San Diego Chargers drafted him in the second round.

In his fourth season with the Saints, Brees led New Orleans to the pinnacle — the franchise’s first and only wins in the NFC championship game and the Super Bowl.

The Saints narrowly missed on their second NFC championship game win in the 2018 season, but lost to the Los Angeles Rams in overtime, a heartbreaking result immortalized by the NOLA No-Call.

Brees, who was 40 at the time, said not knowing how many more chances he’d have at getting that far in the playoffs made the loss all the more painful.

“Yeah, that’s tough to swallow,” he said then. “I think there were plenty of times throughout the season there’s calls that go against you, go for you, or they miss, or they didn’t. Obviously in a situation like that, where it seemed like everybody in the world saw it, it’s tough.”

The Saints’ next two playoff appearances ended before the NFC title game — in the wild-card round against the Minnesota Vikings in 2019 and in the divisional round against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2020.

Much of Brees’ success — his enviable record and record-setting statistics — is mitigated by his ironman reputation.

He missed just 10 games to injuries over his 20-year career. Five were in 2019, because of a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his throwing thumb. Four more were this season after the fractured ribs and punctured right lung.

“He is as courageous and tough a player as I have ever been around,” Payton said in January. “Not only physically, but mentally. And I also know, man, there is a grind mentally, a physical wear and tear each week of getting ready to play at that level and the level he expects himself to play at.

“So nothing that he ever does surprises you, because you’ve just seen it time and time again. And he’s (not only) one of the best players obviously of all time, but one of the best teammates, and one of the best guys to be around and coach.”

While the absence Brees leaves at quarterback will be daunting to whomever replaces him, the former Purdue Boilermaker and Texas transplant’s thumbprint will always be found in the city of New Orleans.

The Brees family saw the destruction Hurricane Katrina left in her wake before they’d signed on to call New Orleans home. They could have bolted, unwilling to relocate to a city in shambles. Instead, amid the debris, they saw a city worth rebuilding. A city where the good times could one day roll again.

Brittany, Drew’s wife, said back in 2006 they felt called to New Orleans to help it move forward. They rebuilt parks and playgrounds, donating nearly half a million dollars to rebuild Lusher Charter School’s classrooms and its football field.

In recent years, they’ve donated nearly $500,000 to renovate locker rooms at Ben Franklin High School in 2018 and to fund the KIPP Believe school in Gentilly in 2019.

And last year, the Brees family donated $5 million to organizations around the state of Louisiana to combat hunger associated with the coronavirus pandemic, and another $5 million through their foundation went to support healthcare initiatives throughout underserved Louisiana communities.

• • •

After his final game, the 42-year-old returned to the field with his family to relish their final moments inside the building they’ve called home for a decade and a half.

Drew and Brittany embraced, their noses nearly touching. They looked longingly into each other’s eyes.

When they moved to New Orleans in 2006, they’d been married for three years. They’re now fast approaching their 20th anniversary together. Baylen, their oldest child, was born on Drew’s birthday in 2009, his youth canonized in the photos of father clutching son amid Super Bowl confetti in February 2010. Now Baylen is a 12-year-old designing custom cleats, winning fantasy football championships and one of four Brees kids. All were running circles around their parents that final night in the Superdome.

They posed for pictures. In between the photo sessions, Brees played catch with his boys, occasionally serving as their center. He helped Rylen, his youngest child and only daughter, hold a few handstands.

Around an hour in, a friend of Drew’s crashed the party: Brady.

Brees and Brady spent nearly 15 minutes talking with each other, wrapping up their conversation with a hug. Before Brady walked to the bus, he threw a soft end-zone fade to Baylen.

A few feet away, Rylen wrestled with Callen, then cartwheeled over him as he lay on the turf.

“Be nice to your sister,” Brady said to the three Brees boys as he walked to the bus.

As the night wound down, the Brees family picked up their things and walked up the same tunnel Drew ran into after the game ended, leaving the field one final time at 10:50 p.m.

Brees arrived in New Orleans to a battered but not broken city, one still haunted by the painful aftermath of a history-altering disaster.

Fifteen years later, he left the Superdome’s turf as an unmistakable and iconic piece of the complex fabric that binds the city together.

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