Before Drew Brees turned into the NFL’s all-time leading passer, he was a quarterback with a damaged shoulder and a future that looked far from certain. In 2006, the Saints saw that uncertainty and decided to embrace it.
New Orleans was in the middle of a reset on every level. The city was still less than six months removed from Hurricane Katrina.
The Saints were coming off a 3-13 season, the Superdome could not be used, and the franchise still didn’t know where it would play. Sean Payton had just been hired, and quarterback was one of the biggest questions on the board.
The team looked at plenty of options. Matt Leinart and Vince Young were headed into the draft, while Brees, Daunte Culpepper and Josh McCown were available in free agency. Brees ultimately rose to the top of the Saints’ list.
New Orleans even flew to Birmingham, Alabama, to meet with Brees and his wife, Brittany, while he was rehabbing the shoulder injury that ended his time in San Diego. Miami was in the mix too, and then-Dolphins coach Nick Saban wanted to bring him in. But there was real skepticism inside the Dolphins organization about whether Brees could ever get back to who he had been.
“I never felt any doubt from the Saints that I wasn’t gonna come back and be able to help lead this franchise, and this community,” Brees said. “I certainly felt those doubts from the Dolphins side.”
That doubt was rooted in the injury itself. The damage to Brees’ throwing shoulder was viewed as something quarterbacks simply didn’t come back from.
“The diagnosis coming off of that was, well, we think he’s got a 25% chance of ever coming back and playing again,” Brees said.
Brees said Saban still supported him, but Miami eventually listened to its doctors and moved on. The Saints took the opposite path.
Dr. James Andrews could not guarantee Brees would be fully recovered in his first season with New Orleans.
What he did say was that Brees could be close to 100% by his second year. That was enough for the Saints to keep pushing.
“We bet strongly on the makeup and the grit,” Payton said.
For Brees, that belief mattered because he was dealing with his own doubts too.
“None of this is possible without Sean Payton and Mickey Loomis believing in me at a time when it was kind of hard for me to believe in myself, you know, coming off that injury,” Brees said. “But it was those guys who saw something in me, believed in me, and it equipped and empowered me.”
Once the Saints made their decision, they wanted Brees to feel exactly how serious they were.
“Once we decided that Drew was the guy we wanted, man, we were all in,” Loomis said. “And we wanted to make sure that he knew we were all in with him.”
Brees needed a team willing to trust the recovery. The Saints needed a quarterback who could help rebuild the franchise and reconnect it with New Orleans. As Brees put it, “You don’t know it in ’06, but in 2026, you know it was a match made in heaven.”
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