New Orleans Saints legend Drew Brees may have retired from football, but some ‘what-ifs’ from his career still haunt him. In an era when Tom Brady’s New England Patriots won six Super Bowls, Brees and his team won only one. Many times during his 20-year NFL career, his unit came very close to winning the championship, so what led to so many missed opportunities? According to Brees, the format of the NFL playoffs played a big role in his not getting a second Super Bowl ring before retirement.
“I think we’ve all probably had experiences on teams where you felt like you had a team that was good enough to go win it all, and it didn’t happen,” Drew Brees said on the latest episode of the Get Got Pod podcast. “I would say of the 20 years that I played, there were at least three, maybe four other teams that I felt like were good enough to win it all, but didn’t. In some cases, I felt like we truly had the best team in the league, and we weren’t able to win.”
“And I think that’s what’s unique about the NFL, different than the other three major sports leagues, in that they have seven-game series and we don’t. We have one game, right? So, you have an off day, off game, off night, or whatever it is, or just a set of circumstances that don’t go your way, and it doesn’t happen.”
When Drew Brees joined the Saints in 2006, he transformed a struggling franchise almost overnight. Before his arrival, the Saints had recorded just seven winning seasons, five playoff appearances, and a single playoff victory in their 39 years of franchise history. From 2006 to 2020, Brees led the franchise to seven NFC South titles, nine playoff victories, and three NFC Championship Game appearances.
But the highlight of Brees’ career came in the 2009 season, when he led the Saints to a 31–17 win over the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV. Brees delivered a Super Bowl MVP performance in that game, completing 32 of 39 passes for 288 yards and 2 touchdowns. Interestingly, Brees never threw for 300 yards during that playoff run, but he also didn’t throw a single interception. That efficiency proved crucial in the Saints’ lifting their first Lombardi trophy.
Yet in the years that followed, even as Drew Brees remained productive well into his 40s, several promising seasons ended in heartbreaking playoff defeats for the Saints. Now, looking back on his NFL career, Brees believes that the league’s win-or-go-home format played a role in those missed chances.
According to Brees, in other major sports like baseball, one rough outing from a pitcher doesn’t necessarily end a team’s season because another game follows. Similarly, in basketball, Brees believes that every team has a backcourt, a six-man, or something else that’s going to help them win. But the NFL playoffs format is such that players don’t have a chance to come back, and that scenario has played out more than once for Brees.
Drew Brees names his teams that could’ve won the championship
Even today, when Saints fans and players are asked about the ‘one that got away,’ many will point to the 2011 season. The Saints’ team in that season, featuring Drew Brees alongside playmakers like Marques Colston, Jimmy Graham, and Darren Sproles, still has the NFL record for most yards gained in one season (7,474 yards). Still, the Saints failed to win the Super Bowl that season, and it was one of those teams that Brees thinks was very close to getting the job done.
“The 2011 Saints, the most prolific offense in the history of the world, and we ended up going to San Francisco and losing in a crazy game,” Drew Brees said. “In 2017, the Minneapolis Miracle, we were rolling. We go, we beat, but if we win that game, we go to Philly. Now Philly had a magical run, right? They end up going and beating, but boy, were we rolling. And we didn’t fear them. 2018 was the no-call at our place. In my opinion, we had the best team in football that year. So we would have gone and played the Patriots.”
“And then look, 2020, we were good enough to win it all, too. So, I think that’s when you look back on it, you say, ‘Man, one play here or there with a couple of those teams and one championship turns into two turns into three turns into more.’ But look, that’s the way it goes.”
During that 2011 season, despite finishing 13–3, the Saints entered the playoffs as only the No. 3 seed. Then, in the Divisional Round game, the Saints lost a back-and-forth contest in the final seconds by a score of 36–32 to the San Francisco 49ers. Another time that Drew Brees thought that his team was close to winning the Super Bowl was in the 2017 season, when the Saints lost in the playoffs due to ‘the Minneapolis Miracle.’
With 25 seconds left in the Divisional Round game against the Minnesota Vikings, Brees helped the Saints erase a 17-0 deficit and take a late 24-23 lead. But on the last play of the game, Vikings quarterback Case Keenum threw a touchdown pass to receiver Stefon Diggs that sealed a 29-24 loss for the Saints.
Finally, in Drew Brees’ last season at New Orleans in 2020, the Saints fell 30–20 in the Divisional Round to the eventual champions, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. So, all those years with Brees under center, the Saints often remained contenders. But Brees could not lead the team back to the championship level of 2009 as the team struggled to seal games in the playoffs.
