Drew Brees is one of five NFL legends who will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in August. After a legendary career, which saw him retire as the NFL’s all-time leading passer and completion percentage leader, Brees will finally get to put on the gold jacket and see his Hall of Fame bust in person.

Over the next five weeks, we at EssentiallySports are going to be honoring the five HOF inductees. This week, we’re obviously starting with Drew Brees, but we’ll also be honoring the legendary Larry Fitzgerald, Roger Craig, Luke Kuechly and Adam Vinatieri here shortly.

We’ve already ranked Drew Brees against the greatest quarterbacks of all time, so today, we’re going to take a bit of a different approach and look at some of Brees’s career-defining moments that got him where he is today.

Miami or New Orleans?

Drew Brees spent the first five years of his career with the San Diego Chargers, the team that drafted him back in 2001. However, after five seasons and a gruesome shoulder injury, the Chargers let him test the waters in free agency.

Two suitors quickly separated themselves from the pack, with the Miami Dolphins and New Orleans Saints showing the most interest in Brees. The former Charger wanted to go to Miami, and why wouldn’t he? Nick Saban was there, New Orleans had just gone through Hurricane Katrina and Miami is where every young quarterback wants to live.

Brees visited with the Dolphins and things went well, but before he could sign with Miami, he needed to pass a physical. Unfortunately (at least at the time), Miami’s doctors failed him and said he only had a 25 percent chance of playing football again. Obviously, the Dolphins passed on Brees, leading to him signing with the Saints.

The Saints had just hired Sean Payton to be their next head coach, and in their first year together, Brees threw for 4,418 yards and 26 touchdowns while leading the Saints to a 10-6 record and a trip to the NFC Championship game.

Everyone knows how Brees’s story goes from there. He would go on to lead the Saints to their first, and only, Super Bowl title a few years later and would end his career as one of the most prolific passers in NFL history.

Meanwhile, the Dolphins would start three different quarterbacks in 2006, with the leader being Joey Harrington, who threw for 2,236 yards, 12 touchdowns and 15 interceptions, while finishing the season 6-10. Saban resigned at the end of the year and went on to take the Alabama job, where he’d become the most successful coach in college football history.

Can you imagine if Miami’s doctors didn’t fail Brees and he ended up with the Dolphins? Who knows what would’ve happened? Would the Dolphins have been good enough to keep Saban around? Would the Saints ever win a Super Bowl? Would Alabama have built one of the most successful dynasties in all of sports?

Nobody will ever know, but it’s incredible the ripple effect this decision had. But one thing’s for certain: this was the best outcome for Brees.

Super Bowl XLIV

After a fantastic first season with the Saints, which ended in an NFC Championship berth, New Orleans would miss the playoffs the next two seasons, but it wasn’t because of Brees. The former Charger threw for 4,423 yards and 28 touchdowns in 2007 and 5,069 yards and 34 touchdowns in 2008, but their defenses were just too bad, finishing 25th and 26th in points allowed.

But in 2009, something changed. Brees was his usual self, throwing for 4,388 yards and 34 touchdowns while completing over 70 percent of his passes, but New Orleans’ defense stepped up too, finishing 20th in points allowed. Still not great, but given how good the Saints’ offense was, it was good enough to finish 13-3 and capture the 1-seed in the NFC.

After their first round bye, the Saints rolled the Arizona Cardinals, 45-14, in the Divisional Round, setting up a date with Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC Championship game. That game was controversial for many reasons, but the biggest moment came with under 20 seconds left on the clock. The Vikings had the ball on the edge of field goal range, but instead of trying to pick up a few yards, Favre tried to play hero and ended up throwing an interception to Tracy Porter (remember that name), sending the game to overtime, where the Saints would win with a field goal, sending them to the Super Bowl for the first time in franchise history.

Drew Brees and the Saints clashed with Peyton Manning’s Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV, and things weren’t looking great for them. They fell behind 10-0, but managed to cut the lead to four before halftime, but Manning and the Colts were set to receive. That’s when Sean Payton made one of the gutsiest calls in NFL history.

Instead of kicking off to Indy to begin the second half, the Saints elected to go for a surprise onside kick, and after a huge scrum for the football, the refs ruled that the Saints recovered it.

The Saints would drive down the field and score on a 16-yard touchdown pass to Pierre Thomas, giving them a 13-10 lead early in the second half. The Colts would respond with a touchdown of their own, but from there, it was all New Orleans.

After the Colts’ touchdown, the Saints would march down the field and kick a field goal, get a stop on defense, then go right back down and score another touchdown, plus the two-point conversion, giving them a 24-17 lead with under six minutes to go. But with the ball in Peyton Manning’s hands, anything could happen.

The Colts were moving the ball well. They got the ball inside the Saints’ 35-yard line and had a chance to tie the game at 24, but Tracy Porter came up huge once again, picking off an in-route intended for Reggie Wayne and taking it 74 yards for the game-sealing touchdown.

Brees was named the Super Bowl XLIV MVP after a 288-yard, 2-touchdown performance where he completed 32 of his 39 (82.1 percent) attempts. To this day, Brees’s 82.1 percent completion percentage is the second-highest completion percentage in Super Bowl history.

Four years after joining one of the most pitiful franchises in NFL history – one whose fans used to wear bags on their heads and call their team the A’ints – in a city that just went through one of the biggest natural disasters our country has ever seen, Brees helped deliver their first Super Bowl title. That’s a career-defining moment if I’ve ever seen one.

2011

The 2011 season was one that Drew Brees and Saints fans everywhere will always remember. And it wasn’t because the Saints went 13-3 for the second time in three seasons.

The 2011 Saints offense might be the greatest offense we’ve ever seen. Drew Brees threw for 5,476 yards (which was an NFL record at the time) and 46 touchdowns (third-most in NFL history at the time) while completing 71.2 percent of his throws (which, again, was an NFL record at the time). Statistically, it was the greatest quarterbacking season we had ever seen, but he was inexplicably denied the MVP.

Instead of Brees winning the award, Aaron Rodgers took it home despite being objectively worse. Rodgers threw for 4,643 yards, 45 touchdowns and nine interceptions while completing 67.2 percent of his throws. That is an incredible season that should win MVP nine times out of 10, but you can’t look me in my face and tell me that Brees wasn’t better that year.

The reason Rodgers won the MVP was because the Green Bay Packers went 15-1 and were the 1-seed in the NFC. I would understand if the Saints went 9-7 and missed the playoffs, but they were the 2-seed in the NFC right behind Green Bay and Brees had nearly 1,000 more yards, one more touchdown and a much higher completion percentage. There is no reason he should’ve lost that award.

At the time, Drew Brees’s 2011 season was the greatest quarterbacking season we’d ever seen outside of maybe Dan Marino in 1984, and he didn’t win the MVP. Brees was robbed of the MVP multiple times in his career, but 2011 was just inexplicable.

Brees will always be the greatest player in NFL history to never win an MVP award, but that should not have been the case. He threw for 5,000 yards five different times and never won the award.

While Brees may have been robbed, 2011 was still a career-defining season for Brees. Everyone knew he was one of the greats, but that season really set the tone for the rest of his career. After 2011, he went on to throw for 4,800+ yards in each of his next five seasons, while topping the 5,000-yard mark in three of those.

October 8th, 2018

On October 8th, 2018, the New Orleans Saints hosted the Washington Redskins on Monday Night Football in front of a sold out Superdome. Saints fans from across the country gathered in the Big Easy to see their QB1, Drew Brees, break the NFL’s all-time passing yards record, which was previously owned by Peyton Manning.

In order to break the record, Brees needed to throw for 201 yards against Washington. And with their next game being at Baltimore, Brees had extra motivation to get it done in front of the home crowd.

The Saints got off to a red-hot start, building a 20-6 lead late in the second quarter. After Washington punted with under three minutes to go in the first half, the Saints got the ball back and Brees took a shot downfield to Tre’Quan Smith, who was wide open down the sideline, for a 62-yard touchdown on the first pay of the drive. The touchdown took Brees well over Manning’s 71,940-yard mark, officially making him the NFL’s all-time leading passer.

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