Drew Brees didn’t just land in New Orleans in 2006 - he and his wife, Brittany, felt like the city had already claimed them.
Long before he took his first snap for the Saints, Brees said the visit that helped bring him to New Orleans made the decision feel bigger than football. He pointed to a moment when Sean Payton got lost, and said it helped crystallize what the move meant.
“Sean getting lost, and Brittany and I looking at each other and just saying, this is about so much more than just football and we belong here,” Brees said. “This is God’s calling for us.”
That sense of purpose ran through the Saints’ side of the story too. The franchise knew it was bringing in a quarterback while the team and the community were facing an uncertain future. New Orleans could offer Brees a young, offense-minded coach and the chance for him and Payton to build something together, but the pitch reached beyond X’s and O’s.
“You have an opportunity to do something bigger than football,” Saints General Manager Mickey Loomis said.
Once Brees arrived, the scale of it became even clearer to the people around him.
“Most people don’t get a chance to be a part of something that’s just so much bigger than them,” Brees said.
Payton said the impact stretched beyond the building, especially as many in the community were still unsettled.
“It was different and it was more important,” Payton said.
Inside the Saints facility, Brees immediately changed the standard. His preparation, his command of the offense and his ability to diagnose defenses stood out right away. He and Payton worked in lockstep to make sure players lined up correctly, ran the right routes and were ready for whatever the defense showed.
“These guys are like ones that move the bar completely,” Payton said. “And he did that for all of us.”
Terron Armstead said that Brees’ influence was felt every day through the way he worked.
“His daily standard is probably what I took from him the most,” Terron Armstead recalled. “Like how elite his preparation was every week, every day.”
Armstead also described that drive as rooted in something bigger than individual success.
“It was not for him, it’s for us and our success,” Armstead said.
Lance Moore summed up what that connection meant from Brees’ point of view, saying the quarterback found an organization, a region and a fan base that believed in him.
“This organization, this region, these fans, they believe in me,” Lance Moore said while describing what Brees may have felt at the time.
Brees came in with the responsibility of leading the Saints in the 2006 season, and his preparation and performance helped build a bond that started with that first visit. By the end of it, the feeling was the same one he and Brittany had that day: they belonged in New Orleans.
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