The rain doesn’t fall in New Orleans. It materializes out of the summer humidity. It is one of the most humid places in the world, so much so that when someone has lived it the heaviness never leaves them. We just laugh when visiting a northern city and we hear the declaration that “it’s humid today” at 40%. We would kill for 40%.
How many cities in the world sit below sea level? Well, there’s Atlantis. And there’s New Orleans, a city where the levees rise in the hopes that they can hold the surrounding waters at bay while the antiquated pumping stations struggle to expel. Yearly there’s a massive rain event that gets memorialized. The May 3rd flood. The April 13th flood. Betsy. Katrina. According to reports, there have been 42 flood events in the last 20 years, turning New Orleans into Venice. The Cajun Navy deploys to rescue people who should have known better by now. When you average 62 inches of rain a year and you are below sea level, you will have to deal with it.
New Orleans has given us great music and food and corruption. Bourbon Street is a singular tourist destination that just got the street dug up and paved properly so that a well lubricated tourist can now walk it without fear of breaking an ankle. It only took 300 years. The well-worn phrase “let the good times roll” is only the beginning. The populace takes Mardi Gras and Lent seriously, with a lot of confessions in between.
Then there’s this 54 year old professional football team that New Orleans has. The New Orleans Saints were often associated with ineptitude and irrelevance. But that’s not really fair. The first 20 years were indeed terrible. Then around 1986 Jim Mora and Rickey Jackson came to town and they were competitive for 10 years, as they were later for the 5 Jim Haslett years (although they were divided by a disastrous Ditka interim.) Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, and they had to play out of a moving van for a year while their scarred home, the Superdome, underwent repairs. And it was one ugly, disheartening year that ended the Haslett era. Saints management took a chance on a very young coach Sean Payton, and he took a chance on an injured quarterback named Drew Brees. We had no way to know how things were about to change as rebuilding took center stage.
With their arrival began a 15-year run of upper-echelon football. The Saints had always been important to the region, but their consistency ushered in an era of ever-increasing enthusiasm for the team. Many cities are bitterly divided. New Orleans is not. Yes crime is an issue, but the love for their football team is so universal that the greatest defusal phrase in the world may just be “who dat.”
All this can be traced to Drew Brees. He came to play. His moving van was packed with heart, dedication, work ethic, smarts, talent, and a willingness to get involved in the suffering community.
It wasn’t just that he wanted to win. He hated to lose. I have an enduring image of him. It was the glare. When he threw an interception he would come to the sidelines. He would stand there, often keeping his helmet on, not talking to anyone, making no excuses, like he had just committed an unpardonable sin. He lead so many clutch drives in the fourth quarter, that we were spoiled. I remember in particular one game where the Saints were down to the Redskins 31-16 with 4 minutes to play. Redskins fans were whooping and hollering all around us, and I just had this feeling. You don’t know Drew Brees. The Saints had been flat all day, but suddenly it was like Brees was Zeus and lightening went through the team. They tied it and won in overtime.
That was the thing. We were in every game. We always had a chance. Brees walked up to the line of scrimmage and began directing traffic as only a great student could, less flamboyantly than Peyton Manning, but just as effectively. I have a theory that the great ones like Brees, Brady, and Manning win pre-snap by reading the defenses, which only comes with hours of preparation. It was fun to watch. Every time we walked from our car to the dome, we knew we were going to get our money’s worth.
I know that Brees will now go on to be successful in his business ventures and his broadcasting career, but I had always hoped he would run for public office in Louisiana and apply that same preparation and decision-making skills to running a city or a state. That too would be fun to watch.
I’ve had a few favorite athletes in my life. First there was Bill Mazeroski, a magician at 2nd base. Then Roberto Clemente. You can watch his highlights but here’s what you probably won’t see. He hit in each of the 14 World Series games he played in, and yet there was a key play in each series where he beat out balls he hit back to the pitcher. He ran hard on every play.
Drew Brees was like that. He never took a play or a game off. He had two serious injuries in his last two years, and he almost certainly came back too early from them. But he couldn’t stand to watch any more than he could stand to lose. You can’t win them all. Not when there’s another team on the field, not to mention officiaIs, weather, and momentum to contend with. I know of only one athlete that retired undefeated and that’s Rocky Marciano, but he wasn’t playing a team sport. Team sports are different. They are more rewarding, and more devastating. The Saints losses in recent years were way more devastating than the days that the crowd wore bags over their heads and the conclusion was forgone.
Drew Brees came to New Orleans about the time that I was able to utilize the season tickets my family has had since 1982. I saw him play in person close to 100 times. I started writing this game-by-game blog on every single game for the last 15 years. I gave an often uninformed but emotional reaction to every game. Now I’m hoping I can print each page out and somehow bind it and get it into his hands. If he ever chooses to read it, he will get a reactionary Who Dat view of each game. I grew up wanting to be a sportswriter, changed course in my career, but reverted to it as a hobby in this blog. I really don’t know if I will be as committed going forward.
So not only did Drew Brees bring out the sports fan in me, he reinvigorated my writing, albeit it just-for-fun, and for a miniscule audience. Anyone who watched him for the last 15 years has to admire those traits in him that he brought to New Orleans. He will probably move away now, but he will be leaving with a bigger family, as well as a slew of former teammates that revere him, and a fan base that considers him a legend.
In coming centuries there may come a time when New Orleans joins Atlantis. It seems inevitable. But, the story of Drew Brees will be passed down from generation to generation. A statue will go up, and a pilgrimage will be made to Canton in 5 years. I hope I get to go. Look, sports is just entertainment. It generates huge revenues and as a result athletes are paid a lot of money. The Drew Brees effect on New Orleans transcended sports and money. They say luck is where preparation meets opportunity. True, but Drew Brees is where preparation met opportunity and thrived when a region needed it most.
We needed a Drew Brees and we got him. We will never let him go.
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