#6 - Drew Brees
Judging Drew Brees's career will be one of the more interesting challenges 15-20 years from now. He is a statistical marvel who teamed up with a coach and offensive wizard who opened up the NFL. Peyton Manning led the groundwork, and Drew Brees combined that with volume like we have never seen to put up the most voluminous period of Quarterbacking ever. Drew Brees is unlike any QB in history. He made a sprited run at Dan Marino's long-standing record for passing yards in a season in 2008, falling just 14 yards short of tying Marino's mark. No matter, he ended up smashing in three years later, compiling 5,476, and then broke the old Marino mark two more times. Its now surprising the few times he hasn't approached that mark. It is hard to think of comparable players in other sports, players that have put up absurd numbers that don't really make sense when taken out of context.
This is clearly the steroid era of passing statistics, though the reasons are far more above board than they were in baseball. Well, if you want to put up a Barry Bonds, it probably is Peyton Manning, a QB who was already brilliant before 2011 – the real ‘Year 0’ of the change – but if anything Brees is a Alex Rodriguez. Skeptics could say he was Sammy Sosa, a player who turned great once the game was made easier, but that is being unfair. Drew Brees has proven himself as more than a function of a system and a league that endorsed opening up the game. He is the one who led that fight to do just that, to challenge convention by throwing, and throwing, and throwing.
The criticisms of Drew Brees are readily available. He is not a ‘winner’, as while his playoff record is decent (8-8), what is more glaring is the amount of times a team QBed by Drew Brees for a meaningful portion of the season (> 12 games) failed to make the playoffs – a startling 7 times. If anything, that is the biggest detraction for Drew Brees, that even as passing statistics and efficiency – which Brees is credited with holding over 600+ attempts – correlate well with regular season success, Brees is the negative outlier. The other criticisms are context driven, such as pinging him for playing in a dome, or only succeeding once paired with Sean Payton; whoever almost all QBs are generally better at home than on the road, and we have no real evidence to say Payton is more important to the Saints passing success than Brees. The final criticism is Brees’s penchant for throwing bad picks. When viewed against the sheer amount of times he throws, it actually isn’t that bad, but Brees does throw some bad ones. He’s not perfect; no one is. But he is far closer to perfect than most.
At their peak, the Saints offense seemed wholly unstoppable. The statistics the entire offense rolled up in 2011, a season when they set the record for total yards (7,474), including an 8-game stretch to end the season, including playoffs, where they rolled up 4,203 yards (525 / game). They were the closest thing the league had seen to the Greatest Show on Turf, wholly unstoppable unless they turned the ball over. Each performance was more ridiculous than the next, as they scored 42-45-45-45 in four straight games. The final one was a Wild Card win over the Lions, where they scored six straight TDs. It was offense at a level, a robotic, peerlessly effective level, that the league had never seen. And Brees was its mastermind.
Looking beyond his exploits as a passer, Brees the Hero of the Common Man may be viewed differently in the future as well. Few QBs have been extolled for their leadership and community impact as Drew, and few deserved it so. While his story of going to New Orleans because his heart called out to him underscores the fact that no one else really seemed to want him after his shoulder injury, what he did in leading that team, in that city, from the first year onwards is remarkable. The Saints were as much a part of that cities recovery as a sports team can be, and Brees pushing that team to immediate success was the primary driver. Yet, for all that leadership plaudits he received, and the credit he got as being to go-to example for the potential of a ‘short’ QB, a couple decades from now people can easily argue Russell Wilson as the prime example of these traits.
Drew Brees is an interesting case to view historically. At best, he is the 3rd or 4th best QB of his generation, definitely behind Messers Manning and Brady, and arguably behind Aaron Rodgers – or at least where Rodgers will end up. He spans a period where his late season career and late-career dip in success for the Saints, will hurt him historically as well as Russell Wilson running around becomes our go to for the short type who fought against the system. Still, let’s never forget just how impeccable Drew Brees was in his absolute prime (2006 – 2013), and how that eight year run, and the great surrounding years as well, will always put him right there statistically, if not so much anectodally.
