by Drew Brees
When I woke up the next day, my head was pounding and I was kicking myself. I’m such a jerk. I blew it. I figured I’d probably never see her again. Actually I hoped I wouldn’t run into her because of how embarrassed I felt. I was sure I’d ruined any opportunity to get to know her.
However, for the next six months I saw Brittany everywhere. On the way to class, out to eat somewhere, at a party, in the library—wherever I went, she was there. On a campus with thirty-five thousand students, this was no small feat. I wasn’t sure why this was happening, but to me it seemed like more than chance. To hear Brittany’s version of things, she figured I was a full-blown stalker at that point. She thought I was creepy; I was sure it was destiny.
Every time I saw her, I watched from across the room (okay, so maybe a little creepy), thinking, I really want to talk to her, but she thinks I’m an idiot. I might have been confident on the football field, but I was really shy in these kinds of situations. I started scheming ways to make up for my embarrassing first impression. The truth was, even though I’d been drinking the night I first met her, I didn’t go out a lot. I wasn’t a big partyer. I was grateful to be at a good school, and I was focused on my education and my commitment to the football team. Now I just had to get Brittany to see that.
Six months later I was going to summer school and heading into summer training. Brittany was there for the summer too since she had a job there. On June 25, I was invited to a friend’s apartment, and one of the guys from the team went with me. It was our first night back from break, just before we started our practice schedule in the Midwest heat. I was talking to some guys and having a great time but was about to call it a night because of some early commitments I had the next day. Just then Brittany walked in the door with two of her friends. This was it—my chance at redemption.
For all this time I’d been scared to talk to her. But maybe, just maybe, enough time had passed to make her forget my stupid behavior in January. As the crowd mingled, Brittany’s two friends left her side long enough for me to make my move. I kind of snuck up to her and confidently said hello, pretending we were meeting for the first time.
Sure enough, she hadn’t forgotten. I couldn’t quite place the look on her face. Was she surprised? startled? maybe even a little scared? Regardless, I had her cornered, and she was forced to talk to me. I introduced myself and started over.
With the loud music and conversation, I knew this wasn’t the best place to get to know her. I wanted to find out more about her, and I really wanted her to know I wasn’t a jerk. My strategy was to get to a place where we could be alone and talk.
“Where are you guys going?” I asked Brittany and her friends. I knew they lived in an apartment complex a few miles away. Maybe I could finagle my way into driving her home and having a little more time with her.
“Oh, we’re just going back to our apartment. I need to get some sleep.” Little did she know that I had several friends who lived near her in the same apartment complex. I also knew that everyone was headed back there to go swimming. She was trying to get rid of me, but it wasn’t working.
I looked at my watch. “Yeah, it is getting late. Well, I was going to head over anyway to go swimming with my friends. Can I catch a ride with you?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I probably shouldn’t be driving.”
“Well, at least I could drive you home so you don’t have to come back for your car tomorrow.”
She winced. “No thanks.”
“Really, it’s no problem. I’ll drive your car back.”
“It’s a stick. I’m sure you don’t know how to drive it,” she said, feeling pretty confident that this would end the conversation and she would be rid of me.
“Oh, sure,” I lied. I’d never driven a standard in my life.
She finally relented. “Okay. I guess you can drive my car and just drop us at home.”
“Okay, cool.”
We got to her car, which was a 1990 Toyota Celica twin turbo in two shades of red. It had been in an accident at some point, and the front left fender had been repainted a slightly different shade from the rest of the car since Brittany had to pay for the repairs herself.
We got to the car, and I put the key in. I felt as nervous at that moment as in any game against a Big Ten opponent. I knew enough to push in the clutch, but I wasn’t sure what to do next. I got the car started and tried to figure out how to put it in reverse.
“Are you sure you’ve driven a stick before?” she said.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m just not used to how loose this clutch is. It’s different.”
I started sweating. Don’t ruin this. This is your one chance to make up for being such an idiot. I got us out of the parking lot, and we began jerking down the street. I pulled to a stop sign, and we stalled. Brittany just stared at me.
“Don’t worry; we’re fine,” I said.
It took me half an hour to drive to her apartment—a drive that should have taken only about five minutes. At one point during our whiplashed road trip, I heard Brittany’s head hit the window as I gunned the car forward. I looked over hesitantly, but to my relief Brittany was laughing so hard, there were tears coming down her face. Maybe she was coming around and starting to appreciate my effort, or I had just given her a concussion and she wouldn’t remember this ride home in the morning. Either scenario could work to my advantage.
Somehow, someway, I got us to her place in one piece. I handed her the keys and told her I was going to meet my friends at the pool and I’d love for her to join us. I really didn’t know if she would show up or not. But a few minutes later, there she was, along with her roommate. I felt like I was slowly making progress. After we swam for a while, I asked Brittany if I could use her apartment to change into my dry clothes. She agreed, and I walked her and her roommate back to their apartment. We ended up sitting in her place and talking for hours. We watched the sun come up. And we found we had so many things in common—our love for traveling, our families, the faith and beliefs we shared, how many children we wanted, and on and on. Brittany had been raised in the Episcopal church, and with my faith having really blossomed at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, we had very similar beliefs. I hoped she was starting to see that I really wasn’t this cheeseball who had hit on her six months earlier. I was a decent guy, not the “typical football player” that people have preconceived notions about.
I didn’t tell her that night because I didn’t want to freak her out, but I was sure of it now: I was going to marry this girl. Brittany drove me home—I guess she’d had enough of my driving—and I called my mom the next day to tell her I had met the woman of my dreams.
Neither one of us had seen this coming. Just six months earlier, Brittany had had a two-year dating relationship end badly. She had been pretty hurt and was still working through some trust issues. She was going into her senior year and had no intention of meeting anyone new, let alone starting a relationship. I was only twenty, and I had a full life with football, school, and hanging out with my friends. It was a shock for both of us to be knocked off our feet over each other. But the more time we spent together, the more we talked and shared, the more we were convinced that we were meant to be together. I remember at one point telling her about my injury in high school and how it had been a turning point in my life. She said, “That which does not kill you makes you stronger.” That quote really struck a chord with me. She was right. Little did we both know it was going to be a theme in our lives.
There are so many similarities between us, but I was also intrigued by our differences. I believe God made us different so we’d be more fully one. He brought us together with our similarities, but the differences helped bond us as well. That might seem counterintuitive, but it’s true.
Brittany has certain weaknesses where I have strengths, and I have weaknesses where she is strong. We complete and complement each other. For example, Brittany would admit she will eat anything with chocolate on it (while I am a pretty healthy
eater), has horrible penmanship, has the mouth of a truck driver, hates to do math (even though she worked at a bank and can do it), and can’t spell to save her life. She’ll be texting, and in the middle of the message she’ll ask me how to spell a street name or a difficult word. For me it’s no problem. I was born spelling and computing.
My weak points are putting too much on my calendar (I say yes to everything and then don’t have time for anything), cooking (I believe that surprising Brittany with a meal means bringing home takeout), and communication. I hate hurting people I care about, so I don’t say the things that bother me until they build up and become a much bigger issue than they would have been had I just addressed it at the time. I’m also the kind of person who will spring things on Brittany and assume she knows what’s going on when I haven’t really talked about it until that point. Like “Hey, babe, Sports Illustrated is doing a photo shoot at our house today—can you clean up the house and be ready in forty-five minutes?” She loves when I do that to her. Those are the times flowers are soon to follow.
One of the things I admire about Brittany is the way she’s in touch with her feelings and other people’s too. She has an innate ability to read people and connect with them, and I try to learn from her. She has a knack for meeting someone and really understanding who they are and, a lot of times, what their intentions are.
At Purdue my coaches taught me how important progression is. I had to read the defense, find my receivers, and become the best team player I could be. I did everything I could to win, but I also needed to fight through the losses and learn from them. It was the same with Brittany.
For my final two years at Purdue, my family stayed with Brittany for every home game. She was forced to witness firsthand how divorced parents deal with having to see each other every weekend during the football season. She was thrown into the “custody battle” pretty fast and had to rotate who she sat with at the games. Then on Sundays we would get up and have breakfast with one parent and lunch with the other. It was not an option to all be at the same table together without snide comments or eye rolling. It was pretty stressful for her because it seemed that both parties were trying to get her to pick a side. I remember many nights when we would come home from a dinner with one parent or the other and she would be crying, not knowing how to handle the situation. I was used to this way of life, but it was all foreign to Brittany, who is extremely close to her immediate family as well as her extended family. I would simply ignore the fighting and let the two sides battle it out like they had always done. I was just told where to be and when once the dust settled.
The older I got, the more difficult it became for me to witness the bitterness between my parents. I felt like I needed to start making my own decisions and believed that by doing that, there would be less fighting. This coming-of-age did not go over smoothly. Although I’m sure this process of asserting independence is an issue in every parent-child relationship, unfortunately it was what began the deterioration of my relationship with my mother.
During my senior year I begged Brittany to stay in West Lafayette while I finished school. Although she had already graduated, her plans of going out into the working world were put on hold while I tried to accomplish my final goals as a student athlete. I couldn’t imagine not having her there for every game and every special moment. She worked full-time as a travel agent, paying all the bills. My scholarship check was enough to get us dinner at Bruno’s, a local pizza joint, once a month, and that was pretty much it.
Brittany and I leaned on each other during that time and grew up together over the next few years. But we had no idea what we were getting into. Early on we committed ourselves to each other, and we decided that no matter what happened, we were going to work through any hard times we faced. We would fight together. Quitting or giving up on each other was never an option. Without her I wouldn’t be where I am today.
I didn’t know how important that lesson would be until I made it to the NFL.
Chapter Four
Charging Ahead
Those were good years at Purdue. Just as I’d dreamed, we made it to the Rose Bowl my senior year. We fought hard and won the Big Ten, and then we finally found ourselves at the big game. We played the Washington Huskies, and it was tight almost the whole game. The Huskies scored twenty points in the second half, and we ended up losing 34–24. It was a big disappointment to the team, but we were thrilled to have left our mark on the “granddaddy” of all bowl games. Along the way I was nominated twice for the Heisman Trophy, finishing fourth in 1999 and third in 2000.
In what seemed like no time at all, I was getting ready for the NFL draft. In February 2001, I participated in the Scouting Combine, where players are poked and prodded and sized up in virtually any way you can imagine. If your knees and shoulders and ankles don’t hurt when you get there, they do by the time you leave, after all the team doctors yank on your joints. They make you feel like a piece of meat.
To test physical speed and agility, players run a forty-yard dash, the 5-10-5 shuttle, and the L drill. The scouts even clock your throws with a radar gun—similar to what police officers use when they give you a speeding ticket on the highway. I wasn’t breaking any speeding laws in terms of arm strength. I think my fastest throw was around 60 mph. Then you go through multiple interviews with coaches who pry into just about every subject, trying to find out how much you understand about the game as well as what your personality is like and what kind of guy you are.
A few of those interviews stick out in my mind. Dick Vermeil of the Chiefs asked me a lot of questions, none of which I remember because I was too busy staring at his Super Bowl ring. He’d won it with the Rams a few years earlier. I really wanted one of those. Meeting with offensive coordinator Norv Turner of the Chargers was another key interview. I could really feel his interest in me as a player and a person, and that sense was confirmed when Norv, Chargers head coach Mike Riley, general manager John Butler, and a few other scouts came to Purdue a few weeks later to give me a personal workout. I think I took him back when I asked what they were going to do with Ryan Leaf, whom the Chargers had drafted three years earlier with the second pick but who didn’t seem like a good fit for San Diego. He told me that was none of my business, and then I watched as they released him a week later. That was when I knew they might be drafting a quarterback.
The last memorable interview came with a young quarterbacks coach from the Washington Redskins named Brian Schottenheimer. It was his first year as an NFL coach, and he was only a little older than I was. Little did I know that someday he would coach me for four years in San Diego and become one of my great friends and mentors. Funny how things work out.
It was an exhausting day, but overall I had a positive feeling about how everything had gone. I must admit, though, that I was tired of answering the same questions about my short stature and the fact that I had played in a spread offense almost exclusively in the shotgun my whole college career. Would I be able to adapt to an NFL offense where I would be under center the majority of the time? I kept reassuring them that they had no need to worry—I was pretty sure I could take a snap from under center. In all seriousness, they could watch the film, talk to my coaches, talk to those I played with and against. I tried to give them everything they needed to see and hear. Now there was only one thing left to do: wait for draft day.
On April 21, the air seemed to be filled with electricity. Brittany and I were waiting for the results in my apartment along with Tim Layden, a writer for Sports Illustrated, who was doing a draft profile on me. Brittany had saved up her money to surprise me by flying in my brother, Reid, to also share in the moment with us. I was frying up some fish in the deep fryer and watching the draft on ESPN.
Being a competitive person, I was really counting on going in the first round, at as high a number as possible. I knew very well that’s how a player’s worth is measured. If you’re the number one pick, or in the top five or top ten, you’re deemed one of the best p
rospects in the league. There’s a big difference between the contract of the first pick and the seventh, between the tenth pick and the twentieth.
New England had talked with me about taking me as their sixth pick, and I knew San Diego, who held the fifth pick after a trade with Atlanta, was also interested in me, so I thought I would go pretty high. In the first round, San Diego chose LaDainian Tomlinson. I figured that was it for my chances to play for the Chargers. But I still felt fairly confident I would go as the sixth pick to New England—until they chose Richard Seymour instead.
There were about six other teams who said they might draft me if I was available in the first round. Seattle and Kansas City showed a lot of interest early but traded for Matt Hasselbeck and Trent Green, respectively, prior to the draft. Carolina and Jacksonville had draft picks in the teens and had both seen me throw lights out at my pro day in March at Purdue. Neither one was meant to be. Players like Michael Vick, Santana Moss, and Deuce McAllister, whom I would team up with later in New Orleans, were all drafted ahead of me. I listened as the names were announced all the way through the teens and into the twenties. That left Miami with the twenty-sixth pick.
I had been told by numerous sources, but most significantly Coach Tiller, who had a friend in the Dolphins organization, that if I was still available at that point, they would definitely draft me. I stood by the phone, ready for the call that would say, “Congratulations—welcome to South Florida!” But the call never came. I checked the ringer to make sure the phone was working. Sure enough, that was not meant to be either.
I was frustrated and a little hurt—not so much by the fact that I wasn’t a first-round pick, but more so because I thought I had been lied to. The fact of the matter is, you can’t believe a thing most teams tell you on draft day. I didn’t realize at the time how much goes on behind the scenes. It looks like a pretty exact science, but it’s not. Emotions are high and last-minute information is getting thrown around right up until the draft decisions are made. As the first round neared an end, it became obvious that I would not be drafted by any of the remaining teams. They didn’t need a quarterback. I then saw a familiar team pop up on the draft board.
