Speculation The Saints were apparently this close to signing Tom Brady. (1 Viewer)

Brady wanted to come here and he was going to be signed but then Drew unretired. Brady is a butthead but he truly respects Drew. That dig was not at us or him.
Here is what I have read about the issue:

- During the Pro-bowl, Drew told fellow players he was retiring. Russell Wilson was supposed to be the starter but gave his spot to Drew.

- Once there were rumours about Drew retiring, Brady or his agent contacted the saints, who were very interested on signing him. But they let them know that it was conditional on Drew's final decision.

- Drew learned about the common interest between Brady and the saints, and decided to go for another year.

The saints obliged to Drew's wishes, Brady started looking elsewhere. No hard feelings.

Now, just compare this to the Aaron Rodgers' situation. You hear all the time how the Packers are not giving Aaron his place as the main contributor of the success of the packers. Saints acted the opposite, always grateful of Drew's contribution. Even with the chance of getting Brady, nobody tried to kick Drew out.

Players and agents surely take notice on the way the saints managed the situation.
 
I think there are two aspects to the article.

1. The Saints intended to sign TB12, but afforded Drew the luxury of deciding whether to play on or not.

2. Another team - likely the 49ers or the Bears - opted to stick with their incumbent for another season.

It is team #2 that Brady was referring to. Brady plainly isn't disrespecting Drew. And in any case, he's right. What a daft move to stick with Jimmy G or Trubisky/Foles in preference to the GOAT. The Super Bowl win puts that beyond any doubt.

The Brady to New Orleans rumour has been doing the rounds since well before the Bucs won the Super Bowl. It has been repeated by some fairly credible sources. My impression is that it is accurate, and I tend to agree that the 2020 season is a case of what might have been for the Saints.



This myopic view of the Saints and Drew is getting out of hand. Drew has had the best team in the NFL at his disposal since 2017 and we didn't even make one Super Bowl in that entire period. Of course, he is not exclusively to blame for that, but he saved some of his worst games in the black and gold for the playoffs.
It's not out of hand in big picture. The latter few seasons when we finally had a defense that was not horrendous Drew clearly physically degraded. He either wore down late in the year or as in last season we just gave up trying to stretch the field and completely sold out the offense to what Brees could still do. Drew Brees of 2018 was no where near Brees of 2011.

But we knew that. We knew it would have to be a team effort where defense, running game and coaching had to pick up the slack where Brees degraded. They weren't enough.

I will throw some coaching fails in there too at pivotal moments since 2017 and most certainly across the Brees era. The Minneapolis miracle was in large part enabled by a coaching call. Not benching Jared Cook would be another more recent.

But throughout his prime when he could make all the throws Brees carried a putrid, all time worst defense for numerous seasons. And until they moved on from McMahon Special Teams were also putrid. Added nothing. No big plays, no spark, no lift in starting field position, kicker carousel. All that was on coaching and GM for years of carrying cronies on the staff or making terrible personnel decisions.

Once they got heads out of rear father time caught up with Brees. In that regard you have to tip your hat to Brady because he has held age at bay remarkably well.
 
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Nobody should be holding ill will towards Brees for coming back. If there is one person to rain on is that Loomis is supposed to make the tough decision on when to move on from Brees and he didn't. You can't expect an Alpha like Brees to know when to hang it up.

Letting Brees come back was a Loomis decision. I don't necessarily want my GM to be a nice or emotional guy. I just want him to be business. I trust him to make a business decision for what's best for the team without emotional connect. But it's Drew Brees. You really can't say no, but Loomis should of said no. Brees could of gotten seriously injured last year.

The only thing that I'm really mad about it all is that Brees contract extension really put a hurt on us.
 
Nobody should be holding ill will towards Brees for coming back. If there is one person to rain on is that Loomis is supposed to make the tough decision on when to move on from Brees and he didn't. You can't expect an Alpha like Brees to know when to hang it up.

Letting Brees come back was a Loomis decision. I don't necessarily want my GM to be a nice or emotional guy. I just want him to be business. I trust him to make a business decision for what's best for the team without emotional connect. But it's Drew Brees. You really can't say no, but Loomis should of said no. Brees could of gotten seriously injured last year.

The only thing that I'm really mad about it all is that Brees contract extension really put a hurt on us.

Brees was more than 6 points per game better than Bridgewater in 2019 and Hill in 2020. What should be alarming to us all is that the Saints had quite literally no real replacement option for a QB who was clearly at the end of his career.
 
well with it being the Saints and with exception of 2009, this team seems to always have the worst luck. Its as if there is a mirror breaking contest every year.

With that in mind Brady wouldn't have won here. It is just the way it is.
I don't know , Brady seems to have a 4 leaf clover stuck to a horse shoe that is shoved all the way up his colon. He is a great player, no question about that, but the man has had incredible luck through out his career to get a lot of Superbowls.

He might have actually won one with Saints.

Look at examples

1) playing the crappy AFC East for all those years.
2) the obscure "Tuck Rule" call.
3) Russell Wilson throws ill fated interception in SuperBowl.
4) no punishment for Deflategate.
5) patriots not punished severely for Spygate or Happy Endinggate.
6) Patriots playing a BS Rams team instead of Saints in SuperBowl.
7) Bucs taking the easiest route thru the playoffs. Catching teams missing key players. Saints not getting the playoff Bye week, they rightfully earned. BUCS having a late regular season Bye week.

Hell , he married a world-famous supermodel and is good looking and rich on top of that.

I'm actually beginning to think he made a deal with the Devil.
 
The only people that really knows whether or not the Saints passed on Tom Brady is Sean Payton and Mickey Loomis. Now the interesting question is why hasn't either one of those two say anything?
 
It's not out of hand in big picture. The latter few seasons when we finally had a defense that was not horrendous Drew clearly physically degraded. He either wore down late in the year or as in last season we just gave up trying to stretch the field and completely sold out the offense to what Brees could still do. Drew Brees of 2018 was no where near Brees of 2011.

But we knew that. We knew it would have to be a team effort where defense, running game and coaching had to pick up the slack where Brees degraded. They weren't enough.

I will throw some coaching fails in there too at pivotal moments since 2017 and most certainly across the Brees era. The Minneapolis miracle was in large part enabled by a coaching call. Not benching Jared Cook would be another more recent.

But throughout his prime when he could make all the throws Brees carried a putrid, all time worst defense for numerous seasons. And until they moved on from McMahon Special Teams were also putrid. Added nothing. No big plays, no spark, no lift in starting field position, kicker carousel. All that was on coaching and GM for years of carrying cronies on the staff or making terrible personnel decisions.

Once they got heads out of rear father time caught up with Brees. In that regard you have to tip your hat to Brady because he has held age at bay remarkably well.

Payton's loyalty to McMahon, Vitt, and Johnson was his own undoing. I still get mad that after 2012 we still had to suffer for four more years with those bumbling idiots.
 
Jeff Darlington is really tight with Brady's camp. He has nailed everything wrt Brady.

If he's saying something about Brady, you can take it to the bank.

It may be true - Brady may have been referring to the Saints deciding to go into last season with Winston as their starting QB instead of Brees. We forget just how close Brees came to retiring before last season. His last home game he lingered in the Dome taking it all in, then Russell Wilson allowing him to start in the Pro Bowl were all signs Brees was going to retire. Brees came back because of how close the Saints to winning it all. So Brady may have been talking about Winston…..
 
It's not out of hand in big picture. The latter few seasons when we finally had a defense that was not horrendous Drew clearly physically degraded. He either wore down late in the year or as in last season we just gave up trying to stretch the field and completely sold out the offense to what Brees could still do. Drew Brees of 2018 was no where near Brees of 2011.

But we knew that. We knew it would have to be a team effort where defense, running game and coaching had to pick up the slack where Brees degraded. They weren't enough.

I will throw some coaching fails in there too at pivotal moments since 2017 and most certainly across the Brees era. The Minneapolis miracle was in large part enabled by a coaching call. Not benching Jared Cook would be another more recent.

But throughout his prime when he could make all the throws Brees carried a putrid, all time worst defense for numerous seasons. And until they moved on from McMahon Special Teams were also putrid. Added nothing. No big plays, no spark, no lift in starting field position, kicker carousel. All that was on coaching and GM for years of carrying cronies on the staff or making terrible personnel decisions.

Once they got heads out of rear father time caught up with Brees. In that regard you have to tip your hat to Brady because he has held age at bay remarkably well.
Every head coach in the NFL has made bad decisions. You are correct with the bad defenses that the offense had to carry.

But Sean Payton definitely deserves the credit for re-building the defense recently with bringing in decent coaches and players, which lead to the saints rebounding with 4 seasons to the playoffs, after 4 seasons of 7-9. He knows how to build a football team and have them competing for the Superbowl.
 
Brees was more than 6 points per game better than Bridgewater in 2019 and Hill in 2020. What should be alarming to us all is that the Saints had quite literally no real replacement option for a QB who was clearly at the end of his career.
And that's okay. We would of ended up drafting a QB this year.
 
My 1 and only gripe about Brees the last 4 years is that for the last 4 years, the run game has been working better than it ever has under Sean, and for the last 4 years we've completely abandoned it in the playoffs.

2017 - Coming into Minnesota with a pass heavy game plan leading to us being down big before finally getting the pass game going wore the whole team out.
2018 - Tedd Ginn catches the game winning 1st down putting us in field goal range and we proceed to throw the ball 3 times wasting 0 seconds.....run on 1st down and Brees gets his second ring.
2019 - Sean looked at the 2017 game plan and said "yep that's the winner!" and we pretty much had a repeat.
2020 - Cook fumbles and we go into panic mode with a tie game and asks Brees to chunk it and completely forget about that MVP candidate running back that was cracking off almost 6 yards a carry...
 

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