There are statistics that explain why Drew Brees belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And then there are the things statistics can’t fully explain or capture what it felt like to be in New Orleans in 2006, when an entire city was trying to put itself back together. Statistics can’t measure the suffering and struggle people experienced as they returned to their homes gutted by floodwater, or the grief of families who had lost people they loved. The stats and records alone certainly cannot quantify what it meant, in the middle of all of that, to have something to cheer for again.
On Saturday, Drew Brees was formally enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, a first-ballot selection whose career numbers place him among the greatest quarterbacks ever to play the game. As special as those numbers are, when Brees spoke, the story inevitably returned to New Orleans because Brees understood that the joy he gave to this city was much more powerful and meaningful than any record-breaking statistic.
“New Orleans, you accepted me, you embraced me, you believed in me but more importantly, you trusted me with the soul of the city,” Brees told the crowd during his emotional enshrinement speech.
For people who lived through those years, those words carry a meaning far beyond the usual relationship between a star athlete and the city where he played.
Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005. The Superdome became a refuge for roughly 30,000 evacuees before eventually becoming one of the enduring images of the catastrophe itself. The Saints spent the 2005 season displaced, playing “home” games hundreds of miles away while questions lingered about whether the franchise would even remain in New Orleans.
Then, on March 14, 2006, a quarterback with his own reasons to wonder about the future signed with the Saints.
Brees had suffered a devastating injury to his throwing shoulder in the final game of the 2005 season with San Diego. His labrum was torn, which required surgery. The Chargers moved on, and Miami ultimately declined to sign him amid concerns about whether his shoulder would fully recover. The doctors working with the Miami Dolphins informed Coach Nick Saban that Brees would only have a 25 percent chance of playing again.
So in a city that embraced faith and hope in a time of despondency and despair New Orleans also took a giant leap of faith with Brees and Brees took a chance on New Orleans. When his Hall of Fame selection was announced earlier this year, Brees put it in words that almost perfectly captured the relationship that followed. “I know New Orleans was looking for a quarterback, but I promise you I needed New Orleans more than New Orleans needed me,” he said.
What happened next feels almost too perfectly written to have actually happened. A quarterback trying to rebuild his career arrived in a city trying to rebuild itself.
The Saints opened Brees’ first season with two victories on the road. Then came Sept. 25, 2006.
The Superdome reopened for Monday Night Football against the Atlanta Falcons. More than 70,000 people packed the building. For one night, the Dome was no longer the battered shelter the country had watched on television during Katrina. It was ours again.
Steve Gleason burst through the line and blocked a punt less than two minutes into the game. Curtis Deloatch recovered it for a touchdown. The sound that followed has become part of New Orleans history. Many sports commentators today put this game at the top of the lists as one of the most memorable games in NFL history.
The Saints won 23-3 with Brees completing 20 of 28 passes for 191 yards. Congress would later formally describe the return of the Saints to the Superdome as a “symbol of hope” for the rebuilding of New Orleans, Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.
During that game, for the next few hours, the pain that people were continuing to endure during the post-Katrina recovery had been forgotten and there was just pure joy. They could scream, hug strangers, and believe again; and Brees kept giving them reasons to believe.
That Saints team, led by Brees and Payton understood the moment in time we were in and they met the moment. Following that blocked kick, no one had any doubt that the Saints would win that game. Not only did they win that game, but we went on to experience one of the best seasons ever, reaching the NFC Championship game that year, which is a feat that the Saints had accomplished only three times in its entire franchise.
In his first season with New Orleans, he threw for 4,418 yards and led the Saints to the NFC Championship Game for the first time in franchise history. A franchise that had spent decades as one of the NFL’s most reliable punchlines suddenly became one of its most dangerous teams.
Then Brees began rewriting the record book. He would finish his 20-year career with 80,358 passing yards and 571 touchdown passes, both second in NFL history. He completed 7,142 passes and made 13 Pro Bowls. He led the NFL in passing yards seven times and in touchdown passes four times. He won NFL Offensive Player of the Year twice.
Some of Brees’ records remain almost difficult to comprehend. Brees produced five 5,000-yard passing seasons, still the most in NFL history. He threw a touchdown pass in 54 consecutive games, a league record that remains intact.
Then there is his accuracy. In 2018, at 39 years old, Brees completed 74.4 percent of his passes, still the highest single-season completion percentage in NFL history. Even more remarkable, Brees also owns the second-highest mark, 74.3 percent in 2019, and remains scattered throughout the top of the all-time leaderboard.
Records are made to be broken, the old saying goes. Maybe one day those will be, too. But five 5,000-yard seasons, 54 straight games with a touchdown pass and two seasons completing more than 74 percent of his passes are the kind of numbers that could remain beside his name for a very long time.
Still, none of them produced the moment New Orleans will remember most. That came on Feb. 7, 2010 when the Saints battled the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV. It was an epic battle between two eventual Hall of Fame quarterbacks.
Brees completed 32 of 39 passes for 288 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions against Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts. His 32 completions tied the Super Bowl record, and he was named the game’s Most Valuable Player as the Saints won 31-17. This was the year that many fans believed Brees should have received the season MVP award, and in any other season beside that one season, he most likely would have. But Peyton Manning had won the MVP that season. Brees received the bigger award though, having won the Super Bowl MVP.
For generations of Saints fans who had endured losing seasons, heartbreak, paper bags and jokes at their team’s expense, it would have been extraordinary under any circumstances; but coming less than five years after Katrina, it was much more meaningful to the city.
After the victory, Brees spoke about how much of New Orleans had been underwater and how so many residents had been scattered across the country. He remembered the commitment players and residents had made to rebuild together. “This is the culmination of that,” he said.
Sixteen years later, standing in Canton with a gold jacket and a bronze bust waiting to preserve his face for generations, Brees returned to those same themes.
He talked about the food neighbors brought when he and his wife, Brittany, first arrived. He mentioned food favorites to include crawfish étouffée, jambalaya, and gumbo. He remembered neighbors who brought his family red beans and rice and cornbread every Monday for 15 years. He talked about Sean Payton, his teammates, his wife, his children and the people who helped shape his life.
Then he talked about storms. He spoke about the city going through disasters as reminders of what remains after material things are gone. He told the audience that storms teach us that the things we treasure most are not possessions, but people and the ways we care for one another. It was impossible not to hear Katrina in those words. Perhaps, that is why Brees became something different here than merely a franchise quarterback.
Of course, he did not save New Orleans. New Orleanians saved New Orleans, and they saved New Orleans because they believed. They believed and they had hope. Families came home, neighborhoods rebuilt, and workers gutted houses and reopened restaurants and schools and businesses. People fought bureaucracy, grief, exhaustion and uncertainty because this was their home and they refused to surrender it.
Brees gave the people joy while they were doing it. Sports cannot rebuild a house, nor can a Lombardi Trophy bring back a loved one.
But human beings need joy even when life is difficult. Maybe especially then. For 15 seasons, Brees gave New Orleans plenty of it.
Brees gave the city Sunday afternoons when the Dome shook. He gave it records and playoff victories and division championships. He gave children growing up after Katrina a Saints franchise completely different from the one their parents and grandparents had known.
And he gave New Orleans a Super Bowl Champ, something the city had never possessed before. That is why Saturday’s ceremony in Canton felt like more than the recognition of an extraordinary football career.
The numbers alone made Drew Brees a Hall of Famer.
80,358 yards.
571 touchdowns.
Five 5,000-yard seasons.
Thirteen Pro Bowls. A Super Bowl championship.
A Super Bowl MVP.
But New Orleans knows there was something else.
There was a wounded quarterback who arrived in a wounded city, and somehow each found in the other exactly what it needed.
Twenty years after he first came here, Brees stood among football’s immortals and talked about the city that had trusted him with something far more important than a football.
And then he offered one final truth.
“If you love New Orleans, it will love you back.”
Drew Brees loved New Orleans, and New Orleans loved him back.
And long after the records are broken, that may be the part of his legacy that lasts forever.
