Which games gave Drew Brees the most trouble in his storied NFL career? The former New Orleans Saints quarterback and future Pro Football Hall of Famer shared his take on the toughest challenges he and his teammates had to overcome during a Wednesday appearance on “The Herd” with Colin Cowherd.
Brees said it was those divisional matchups on a short week, played under the bright lights in prime time, that lost him the most sleep. He emphasizes greatly with what players on both the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers are going through ahead of Thursday night’s kickoff.
“These games were more difficult,” Brees reflected. “These games were more difficult just because of the level of familiarity between divisional opponents. And especially when it’s divisional opponents that are the caliber that Green Bay and Detroit are, the caliber of quarterback, the caliber of team, the caliber of coach. Because there is so much familiarity that going into the game you were constantly thinking about, ‘Well man, they know us really well. They know all these tendencies. So they know that I know that we know that they know,’ you go through that whole exercise.”
Mind games were certainly part of it; in some cases Brees and the Saints played the same Atlanta Falcons team twice in three weeks, and that recency and familiarity made planning for a rematch a unique challenge. And in those situations, Brees said he and his teammates leaned on days of careful preparation to win the day.
Brees continued: “At the end of the day it comes down to, ‘We need to be so on point on our execution. This needs to be a flawless execution type of game.’ And that really became the emphasis in all these divisional games, especially the ones that were prime-time and the ones that have so much meaning given these guys’ status and fighting for a division title. So I found that these were the most difficult games given all the factors.”
Still, the results suggest Brees and his teammates rose to this challenge. Brees started in nine games against NFC South division rivals on Thursday nights with the Saints, winning six times. He went 5-2 against the Atlanta Falcons and 1-1 against the Carolina Panthers (the Tampa Bay Buccaneers never warranted a prime-time slot like this). You don’t achieve a Hall of Fame career without relishing a challenge, and there aren’t many tougher games in the NFL than those against familiar opponents on a short week.
