One of the most prolific careers in NFL history came to an end when New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees announced on Sunday on Instagram that he had decided to retire after 20 seasons.
Brees’ four children announced in a video: “After 15 years with the Saints and 20 years in the NFL, our father is finally retiring. So he can spend more time with us! Yes !!” said his sons Baylen, Bowen, Callen and Rylen.
Brees added a message to the post that said:
“After 20 years as a player in the NFL and 15 years as a Saint, it is time to retire from football. Every day, I poured out my heart and soul to be your Quarterback. Until the end, I got tired to give everything that I had for the Saints organization, my team and the great city of New Orleans.We shared some incredible moments together, many of which are etched into our hearts and minds and will be a part of us forever.
“You shaped me, strengthened me, inspired me and gave me a lifetime of memories. My goal over the past 15 years has been to strive to give you everything you gave me and more. I’m just retiring from playing football, No I am retiring from New Orleans. This is not a goodbye, but a new beginning. Now my real life work begins! “
Brees, 42, retires as the all-time leader of the NFL in career passing yards (80,358) and ranks second in touchdown passes (571) and completion percentage (67.7%). More than that, however, Brees will always be revered for helping to revive the Saints franchise and the city of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, when he and coach Sean Payton arrived together in 2006.
They led the Saints for the NFC Championship Game that first year and won the only Super Bowl in the franchise’s history three years later, with Brees being named the game’s MVP.
Brees has never returned to a second Super Bowl, despite leading the Saints to four consecutive NFC South titles in the past four years. His final game was a disappointing 30 to 20 loss to Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the divisional playoff round – the first time he made three interceptions in a playoff game.
His decision to retire leaves a huge void for the saints to fill with Taysom Hill, Jameis Winston or a quarterback to be named later.
Brees’ legacy has long been guaranteed to be one of the biggest names in the game.
In addition to all the gaudy numbers and historical achievements, Brees will also be remembered as a great underdog story of all time. Standing just 2 meters tall, Brees was recruited by only two colleges before a record career in Purdue. He fell for the second round of the draft in 2001, where he began his career with the San Diego Chargers.
In his last game with the Chargers in 2005, Brees suffered a devastating shoulder injury – a 360-degree tear of his lip and some damage to the rotator cuff, which required 12 anchors to repair. Renowned surgeon James Andrews later said that Brees’ recovery was the most notable of all the athletes he has ever treated, and Brees was back on the field with the Saints in week 1 of that unforgettable 2006 season.
Brees ended his career with a record of 172-114 as a full-back in the regular season and 9-9 in the postseason. He was 142-86 and 9-8 in 15 years with Saints, where his partnership with Payton produced some of the most spectacular offensive teams the game has ever seen.
Brees has played more than 5,000 yards in a season five different times – no other defender has done this more than once. He holds the top three percentages of completing a single season in NFL history and six of the top nine.
Brees has been ranked among the top 10 NFL passers by ESPN’s Total QBR metric in all 15 seasons since his creation in 2006; a streak of six years longer than any other defender in that period.
Although he never won a regular season MVP award, Brees finished second, a record four times.
Brees said a long time ago that he believed he could play at a high level until he was 45 – as long as he wanted to continue playing. But starting in 2017, he also said that he started taking each season one year at a time – treating each one as if it were the last – and that he would set aside some time after each season to reflect with his wife Brittany and their children about whether he wanted to continue playing.
Brees had already planned his “next chapter” last year, when he agreed to become an NBC analyst after his gaming days were over.
After losing just one game due to injury in his first 18 seasons, Brees dealt with some significant injuries towards the end of his career. In 2019, he lost five games after breaking a ligament in his thumb. In 2020, he lost four games after suffering a punctured lung and 11 broken ribs.
By retiring now, Brees is paving the way for colleague Brady, in his early 40s, to finish ahead of him in his two most important races in the NFL record book. Brady has 10 more TD passes in his career than Brees, and he needs 1,155 passing yards to pass Brees.
Brees also leaves behind a considerable salary cap of $ 22.65 million, which the Saints are expected to account for in the next two years, due to the way they chose to structure their previous contracts. However, they have already reduced their salary from $ 25 million to the veteran minimum of $ 1.075 million this year so they can wait until after June 1 to officially process their retirement. As a result, they can push $ 11.5 million of their remaining cap costs up to 2022.
Brees will account for $ 12.225 million against this year’s limit through June 1. Then, his maximum amount for 2021 will drop to $ 11.15 million after his retirement becomes official.
This is a big problem for the Saints, who have been more affected by the NFL’s reduced salary cap than perhaps any NFL team this year. They started off-season with almost $ 100 million over the limit before cutting Brees’s salary and releasing veterans like Emmanuel Sanders, Janoris Jenkins, Kwon Alexander and Thomas Morstead, among others.
The Saints also restructured Hill’s contract to create a cap room. Hill received a four-year, $ 140 million contract extension – but each year is voidable and is a mechanism to free up space this year, a source told Adam Schefter of ESPN. This saves Saints more than $ 7.5 million over the limit this year, and their contract numbers this year include a signing bonus of $ 9.686 million, $ 1.439 million guaranteed bonus and a guaranteed base salary of $ 1.034 million more incentives.
On a positive note, Brees is getting Saints in good shape when it comes to backup options. Hill, who is under contract until 2021, remains unproven as a 30-year-old double threat quarterback with limited experience. However, he reached 3-1 as a starter in place of Brees this season, with four TD passes, four TD races, two interceptions and three fumbles lost in that stretch of four games.
Winston, for his part, is an unsigned free agent. But he chose to come to New Orleans last summer with a minimum contract so that he had a chance to learn from Payton and Brees and possibly relive his career as Brees’s successor. And Payton recently made it clear that the Saints want to hire him again and allow him to run for the starting position.
Although Payton chose Hill as a replacement for Brees in the short term in 2020, he insisted that the team is up for Winston’s potential. And Payton has repeatedly insisted that he believes “our next quarterback is in the building” – whether it’s Hill or Winston.