NEW ORLEANS — After 15 spectacular seasons in New Orleans Drew Brees has called it quits on Sunday, March 14 – that’s 15 years to the day that the Saints announced that Brees would be their quarterback.
Everyone in New Orleans has their own opinion and feeling on what Drew Brees meant to the city and to the team.
I tell you what I think, that first season, in ’06, what that team did, and Brees as the leader of that team, to rebuild the psyche of New Orleans and everyone in southeast Louisiana. What’s amazing is they got to the NFC Championship game.
And, the string of winning that he did after that. For me, Drew Brees led the changing of the entire culture around the Saints.
Obviously, for us who grew up in New Orleans, this team had lost for decades. Now, the legacy that Brees leaves behind is all about winning. In fact, if you add up his wins in the regular season and post season, he has more than the quarterback wins of the team’s 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th winningest quarterbacks – combined!
Along the way, he changed how New Orleanians saw the team or see the team going into the future. How they see the city and I think, he helped change how the rest of the country views New Orleans.
New Orleans, because of how much the Saints have won and how big the NFL is, New Orleans is seen as a winning place in a way that honestly it was not in the immediate aftermath of Katrina.
I think that’s Drew Brees’ greatest legacy, how he has changed how people look at New Orleans.
An amazing career – honestly, it’s not a surprise that he’s retiring. The Saints have been operating this offseason under the assumption that it was gonna happen although until it was done, it wasn’t done and now – it’s done.