SAN DIEGO — Drew Brees calling it a career last week brought to mind A.J. Smith's decision to choose Philip Rivers over Brees, not once but twice.
The day Brees goes into the Pro Football Hall of Fame he'll probably laud the late John Butler for taking him in the 2001 NFL Draft, but if he also thanked Smith, too, it wouldn't be without merit.
That's not a criticism of Smith but acknowledgment of the great simpatico enjoyed by Brees, the football Saints coached by a former San Diego State position coach named Sean Payton and the city of New Orleans.
Smith did Brees a favor when he opted for Rivers by investing heavily in the former North Carolina State star in 2004 and two years later nudging Brees into free agency. The Saints were waiting with open arms. Desperate for a franchise quarterback, they swallowed whatever concerns they had about his reconstructed shoulder and signed Brees to the only market-rate, long-term offer he got that March.
The NFL was better for it.
As convenient as it may be for San Diegans to envision Brees leading the Chargers to a Super Bowl victory, the odds of him doing it with the Saints were probably better, which doesn't make his Saints run any less amazing.
With New Orleans, a punch-line franchise for most of its existence, he won a Super Bowl four years after his shoulder was mangled in his final Chargers game and amassed most of the success that made him the NFL's career leader in completions and passing yards and second only to Tom Brady in touchdown passes.
Joining the Saints provided him a clean slate at age 27, under a rookie head coach in Payton who was eager to tailor the offense to Brees.
"I don't know that Drew could have replicated what he did in New Orleans here in San Diego," Hall of Fame receiver James Lofton said two years ago, "because at the time it was still LaDainian Tomlinson's team.
"And so," said Lofton, whose six-year run as a Chargers receivers coach included the two years Brees and Rivers were San Diego teammates, "we were focused around a running back who, we were feeding him the ball in every passing situation and giving him the ball, running it with him 90% of the time. Obviously, LaDainian turned out to become a Hall of Famer because of how much he was used by the Chargers, and whoever's going to play quarterback was going to be second fiddle for a while.
"Drew," added Lofton, "was able to flourish under a guy who played quarterback in Sean Payton. I think Sean saw a lot of what he wanted to be in Drew. It just got right."
Other benefits Brees reaped with the Saints were their dome and a rival's dome, ensuring Brees would play at least nine games per year indoors and two additional NFC South games in a warm-weather climate. The conditions were helpful to a quarterback whose arm strength concerned NFL scouts when Brees was coming out of Purdue, to say nothing of when the bad-luck hit from John Lynch Jr. in the 2005 season finale led to a repair that required 11 surgical screws.
If you want to engage in a football-thought exercise involving Rivers and Brees, as Tomlinson memorably did nearly five years ago, an interesting one is to ponder Brees directing the talent-rich Chargers team that went 14-2 in the 2006 season but lost to the Patriots as a five-point favorite in its first playoff game.
The odds of Brees improving upon 14-2 while coming off reconstructive shoulder surgery: Bad.
The odds of Brees improving upon Rivers' 44% completion rate and 55.5 passer rating against the Pats: Good.
Brees was a sixth-year starter; Rivers was making his playoff debut in his 17th NFL start. The Chargers of Brees had won both games opposite Bill Belichick and Tom Brady.
Tomlinson, who entered the NFL with Brees in 2001, posited that a Brees-led Bolts team would've defeated the Patriots and in turn the Peyton Manning Colts and the Rex Grossman Bears. Cue the confetti shower in Miami Gardens, at Super Bowl XLIV.
"I mean, they both may end up in the Hall of Fame but at that time, I'll say it again: If Drew had been our quarterback, we would have won the Super Bowl," Tomlinson told ESPN in 2016. "A lot of guys on the team felt that way about Drew. It was so unfortunate."
However, it doesn't make sense to believe Brees would've been allowed to quarterback the 2006 Chargers, regardless of whether he was coming off reconstructive shoulder surgery.
Smith had invested too heavily in Rivers not to open up the starting job for him by his third season. Had the Chargers decided to stick with Brees, who was eligible for free agency in March 2005, Rivers requesting a trade wouldn't have surprised local beat writers. Smith having in effect traded a No. 1 draft pick to get Rivers, it made sense to play him.
While the Chargers were of the same medical belief as the Saints that Brees' shoulder injury was career-threatening, not career-ending, the injury made it more convenient for Smith to move Brees along so Rivers could finally play.
Butler had died of lung cancer weeks before the 2003 draft, leaving Brees without his most powerful supporter.
Did Butler see greatness in Brees? If so, he played a very disciplined hand of poker in the 2001 draft by waiting to take him until the first pick of the second round. A round after Tomlinson pulled on dark blue Chargers attire, Butler landed his second Hall of Fame-level player.
Butler wasn't swayed by the conventional wisdom that Brees would be overly limited by his 6-foot height and ordinary arm strength. At Purdue, he compensated with rare accuracy, a high release point and good agility. He joined Len Dawson, Joe Theismann and Steve Young as the shortest quarterbacks to win a Super Bowl, while inspiring a future Super Bowl winner in Russell Wilson (5-foot-10½).
"There has to be true greatness to play as well as he plays with that kind of handicap," former Colts Hall of Fame GM Bill Polian told Super Bowl historian Bob McGinn in 2010 soon after Brees won the game's MVP award opposite 6-5 counterpart Peyton Manning. "It sounds as though I'm denigrating him by saying handicapped, but it is. It's hard to play quarterback and not be 6-4 in today's game. He's done it as well as anyone has ever done it."
Manning, speaking last year, may as well have described Brees when he defined the job's prerequisites. "Playing quarterback," he said, "you've got to be fast-twitched. You've got to be able to make fast-twitched throws and make fast-twitched decisions."
Brees was springy enough to dunk a basketball, and maintained good agility through a final season in which he still managed the "Brees Leap" touchdown by raising the ball over the goal-line scrum with a leaping effort.
Nearly two decades before Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer was creating recent headlines for throwing Cactus League pitches with one eye closed, Brees was throwing passes with both eyes closed in passing drills at Chargers Park. He said it developed his feel and accuracy.
Yet Smith selecting Rivers made football sense, and not only because Rivers was a highly graded prospect. The prior season, when veteran Doug Flutie supplanted him, Brees completed just 57.6% of his attempts and compiled a 67.5 passer rating. He had 15 interceptions, compared with 11 touchdowns.
Brees didn't seem to need additional motivational fuel, but he wasn't the first, or last, franchise quarterback to raise his performance after seeing his bosses go large on a younger quarterback. Many of Joe Montana's best seasons came after Bill Walsh added Young to the 49ers roster. The Chiefs' Alex Smith led the NFL in passer rating in the one year that Patrick Mahomes, in whom the Chiefs invested three draft picks, backed him up. Aaron Rodgers rebounded last year to win the NFL MVP award, merely months after the Packers selected quarterback Jordan Love in the first round.
Brees had vowed to make the Chargers regret using their No. 1 pick to get a quarterback. Shortly before the 2004 draft, per Sports Illustrated's Albert Breer, he told assistant coach Brian Schottenheimer "that would be the worst (expletive) mistake this organization ever could make." The day after the draft, Brees told the Union-Tribune's Jim Trotter he would start and lead the 2004 team to its playoff berth in nine years while also earning a Pro Bowl berth.
The bold prediction held true. And with the Saints, it was more of the same. Brees, whose career, insiders say, should not be judged without crediting his wife Brittany with a big assist, led New Orleans to nine Super Bowl tournaments, producing a 17-17 record. He collected 12 additional Pro Bowl berths and a Super Bowl MVP award.
