New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees announced his retirement from the NFL Sunday in an Instagram post that featured his children saying he's "finally going to retire so he could spend more time with us."
Brees time with the Saints, 15 years, left fans with many memorable and historic moments.
Here's a look at nine of the top moments from Drew Brees' career with the Saints:
1. Drew Brees signs with the Saints – March 14, 2006: Even the very beginning of Brees’ tenure in New Orleans saw the future Hall of Famer living the ideals he came to symbolize in the Crescent City. Brees threw himself into the task of quarterbacking a broken franchise – with just one playoff win all-time before Brees arrived – in a broken region still trying to overcome the challenges of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation.
Brees signed a six-year, $60 million contract – a deal that would prove to be an absolute steal in short order.
2. The Superdome reopens – Sept. 26, 2006: What a night for Brees to experience his first home game in front of the Saints faithful. To say the Who Dat Nation was in full throat would be an understatement, with U2 and Green Day warming up a well-lathered Monday night crowd before the Black and Gold made their long-awaited return to their legendary home turf.
Brees had a pedestrian night by his soon-to-be-usual standards – 20 for 28 for 191 yards – but it was one of those nights where the stats were inconsequential to the greater meaning. The game was won four plays in with Steve Gleason’s iconic punt-block. The residual elation would last all the way to the Saints’ first-ever trip to the NFC Championship Game four months later.
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3. A “perfect” performance – Nov. 30, 2009: After the Saints’ magical “worst-to-first” year in 2006 carried them all the way to the doorstep of the Super Bowl, Brees toiled in ’07 and ’08 as a bright spot on a ho-hum team. But a roster reshuffle in 2009 timed up perfectly with a couple of key free agent signings and the full blossoming of the team’s 2006 draft haul.
By November, the Saints had gone over half the season with their record unblemished, and at 10-0, they were set to test their mettle on Monday Night Football against the team that had set the tone for the NFL all decade-long. And Brees saved his best for Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and the dynastic New England Patriots.
With the nation watching, Brees was magnificent. He completed 18 of his 23 passes for 371 yards, 5 touchdowns, no interceptions, and a perfect 158.3 QB rating — a rarity against a Belichick defense. Brady was pulled midway through the fourth quarter and the Pats raised the white flag to the delight of a raucous Superdome. New Orleans improved to 11-0 with a 38-17 win, and for all of his amazing accomplishments, the night was likely the most masterful performance of his career.
4. Brees beats Brett – Jan. 25, 2010: About 3 ½ years after that magical Big Easy evening that saw the Saints return home, the Superdome was exuberant for a very different reason. For the second time in their history, and second time since Drew Brees’ arrival, New Orleans found themselves a win away from their first Super Bowl appearance. In 2006, they fell short in Chicago. This time, they got to contest the matchup in front of their own rowdy fanbase.
The Saints’ signal-caller went toe-to-toe with one of football’s true iron men, a grizzled and gritty Brett Favre. No longer piloting the Packers offense, Favre led the Minnesota Vikings into the Crescent City and what ensued was nearly four hours of high drama as the two went back and forth, eventually needing overtime to settle things.
After winning the overtime coin-toss, Brees ensured Favre and the Vikings offense wouldn’t see the ball again. When the smoke cleared, it was Brees and the Saints holding aloft the George Halas trophy for the first time in franchise history, and it was the Saints quarterback’s steady hand that upended a Vikings team that turned the ball over five times. Still the greatest victory the Superdome has ever played host to.
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5. “Super” Saints – Feb. 8, 2010: After looking outmatched for most of the first half of their first ever Super Bowl appearance, Brees steadied the Saints in the second half, coming from behind twice and putting on a passing clinic on what would be the winning drive of the game. On a nine-play drive with the game on the line, Brees used virtually ALL of his weapons to keep the AFC Champion Indianapolis Colts off-balance. Literally.
In less than five minutes of game-time, Brees was 7 for 7 to seven different targets. Pierre Thomas, Devery Henderson, Reggie Bush, Marques Colston, Robert Meachem, and David Thomas caught the first six. Jeremy Shockey caught the seventh to punch the ball into the end zone. Then Brees added Lance Moore to the list with a completion for a crucial 2-point conversion.
The drive was a microcosm of Brees’s entire career and showcased his ability to play to his targets’ strengths and spread the ball around.
Of course the most iconic moment came when Brees held his first-born son Baylen high to the sky amidst the falling confetti at game's end, an everlasting image in New Orleans sports history. He would hoist the Lombardi Trophy as Super Bowl MVP a few short moments later.
6. The “New” Greatest Show on Turf – November 13, 2011: By 2011, Drew Brees had raised his stock in the NFL to “Elite QB” status, but no offense in NFL history had been as machine-like as the one Brees helmed for the Saints that year.
He had thrown for over 5,000 yards before and had teased breaking Dan Marino’s longstanding single-season passing record three years earlier.
He had twice led the league in passing yards, but no one was prepared for what the Black and Gold would unleash on opposing defenses in 2011.
Brees would obliterate Marino’s record that year with 5,476 passing yards. The Saints offense would rack up 7.474 yards on offense, another NFL record. And for good measure, Saints running back Darren Sproles broke the NFL’s “all-purpose yards from scrimmage” record with 2,696.
That Saints offense would power the team to a 13-3 record, an NFC South title, and a trip to the divisional round of the playoffs, where they nearly had enough firepower to overcome five turnovers. It seems the only thing that could have stopped that Saints offense was the Saints offense themselves.
7. A model of consistency – Oct. 7, 2012: Breaking Marino’s 27-year-old record the previous season was impressive. But Brees is nothing if not a student of the game and its history, and the next year he tore down an even longer-standing mark, providing a bright spot in a dark year for Saints fans.
The 2012 season brought the full wrath of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell down upon the Black and Gold, who suspended coach Sean Payton for the entire season for an alleged pay-for-performance operation spearheaded by then-defensive coordinator Gregg Williams during the 2009 world championship season. (Williams’s own “indefinite suspension” also topped out at a year before he was reinstated.)
But Payton was allowed back in the confines of the Superdome in Week 5 to watch from a suite as Brees broke a record set by the legendary Johnny Unitas in 1960 when he threw a touchdown pass in a 48th consecutive game.
There’s always a certain cosmic kismet when Brees makes history. The game was also his 100th in a Saints uniform, and he did it against the then-San Diego Chargers, the only other NFL team he had suited up for.
8. Brees blows away the history books – Oct. 8, 2018: As he closed in on 40 years old, Drew Brees became the poster-boy for quarterback efficiency, racking up all-time great completion percentages and stacking up passing yards year after year after year, even during some lean years for the Who Dat Nation.
But in 2017, the team landed one of the all-time great draft classes and instantly left behind their wanderings in the desert to become a contender again, bringing the national spotlight back to their always-steady signal-caller in the process just as he was closing in on another all-time mark.
In Week 5 of the 2018 season, Brees once again stepped onto the floor of the Superdome for an appearance on Monday Night Football, needing just 201 yards when the night began to pass Peyton Manning in the record-books for the most career passing yards in history.
He blew through the finish line in spectacular fashion, breaking the record on a 62-yard touchdown pass to Tre’Quan Smith. The Saints would blow through visiting Washington that night as well 43-19.
9. One last look back – Jan. 17, 2021: Time waits for no man. All good things must come to an end. Father Time is undefeated.
There’s lots of clichés that attempt to take the sting out of “the end.” But that doesn’t make it any easier when it gets here.
The 2020 season was a hard one for Drew Brees as he suffered a number of devastating injuries – a torn rotator cuff, 11 broken ribs, a collapsed lung – but Brees returned in time to lead the Saints to a fourth straight NFC South title and a trip through the postseason. That journey came to an abrupt end though in the divisional round of the playoffs when an uncharacteristically off night came at the worst possible time for the Black and Gold.
A Tampa Bay Buccaneers team led by Tom Brady – one the Saints had swept in the regular season – proved to have the proverbial “third time” charm needed to eliminate New Orleans. The whispers that Brees was prepared to walk away were already starting to leak out, and watching him in the closing moments of that 30-20 loss was heart-wrenching for the Who Dat Nation as he looked out on a nearly-empty Superdome, a function of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, with the emotion welling up in his usually-stoic face.
After the customary postgame handshakes, Brees took one last glance back at the field, at the stands, at his life in the NFL, before entering the tunnel to the locker room, Though it was brief, the weight of the finality of that moment was nearly unbearable. He knew. We knew.
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