Coming Back Stronger

by Drew Brees

  As soon as I hung up, I knew what would happen on the other end. Coach Saban would call their general manager and tell him to do the deal with Daunte Culpepper. But the minute I was off the table, they had no bargaining leverage. I had just thrown a wrench in their negotiations.

  Immediately I called my agent. “Tom, do the deal with New Orleans.”

  Chapter Eight

  The Comeback

  From the very beginning in New Orleans, there was a warmth from the people that confirmed this was where we were supposed to be. When we ate in the chef’s kitchen at Emeril’s restaurant, he left a cookbook for me at the table. I opened the front cover and saw he had signed it.

  To Drew: You sign with the Saints, and I’ll be cooking your first meal for you in your house here in New Orleans. Emeril Lagasse

  As we walked through the restaurant and down the street, I was amazed by how many people randomly came up to us. “Hey, I’ve been a fan of yours since college. We’d love to have you in our city.”

  I had anticipated the feeling that this was a city on its way out, but that’s not what we discovered at all. Instead, we found a tight-knit, welcoming community filled with people who are deeply rooted in the city they love. When they realized Brittany and I were considering making that area our home, they opened their arms to us. Their energy and optimism for their community showed us what could be done in New Orleans. Despite the tragedy of the hurricane and the devastation and mismanagement that followed, there was hope. There was life. And no matter how desolate things might have appeared on the outside, if you went deeper, you could feel a strong heartbeat in the city.

  I had no doubt when I signed the contract with New Orleans that this was the right place for us. But at the same time, I felt a sense of fear and angst because there was such a big job ahead. Just rehabbing my shoulder felt at times like I was giving every ounce that I had. To rebuild a team and organization, then a stadium, and then an entire city—those were huge tasks beyond the scope of human capability. When I looked at the challenges before us, it was overwhelming, and I hoped I could fulfill my role and do my part.

  However, I clung to the belief that if God calls you to it, he will give you the power to walk through it. He will give you the tools required to accomplish the task. He will give you the heart, the resolve, and the fortitude you need. In one sense, I’m glad the task was so much bigger than any person or team could achieve. It forced me to rely on God and other people in new ways—this wasn’t something I could try to pull off by myself. And if we had any success, everyone would know we couldn’t have achieved it by human effort alone. There was something—Someone—bigger involved.

  I compare the feeling I had right then with the butterflies I get before a game. There’s an excitement, a nervousness, that comes prior to any big event, and no matter how much you prepare, no matter how confident you are, you still have a bit of fear and anxiety mixed with anticipation. At the core of that is a feeling of responsibility. I have a task to complete, and I want to bring my best today.

  The Bible says, “To whom much is given . . . much will be required.” I know I have been given a lot throughout my life. I’ve been blessed with a ton of tremendous opportunities. I’ve been surrounded by unbelievable people—family, mentors, coaches, teachers, friends, my wife and soul mate. These people have supported me and helped mold me into who I am. They’ve given me the confidence to attempt some things that are too big for me to handle on my own. Every time I walk onto the field or stand in front of a group to raise awareness for our foundation or pick up a hammer to work on rebuilding a house in the Lower Ninth Ward, I feel this sense of responsibility on my shoulders. I want to give back a little of what has been given to me and in some way pay it forward to those who otherwise might not have as many opportunities as I’ve been given.

  But before I could really dig in to the rebuilding process in New Orleans, I had to move further down my own long road to recovery. And I wasn’t prepared for how long or painful it would be.

  My Throwing Arm

  Ever since I was little, whether I was playing baseball or football, I’ve always had a strong arm. It didn’t matter if I was tossing the ball in the yard with my brother, Reid; playing a pickup game on the playground; or participating in organized ball—there was a certain feeling I had when I could zing the ball to a friend and hit him right in the chest. There was nothing like the sound of a fastball popping a catcher’s mitt or the thump of a football hitting your target in the chest. Sometimes my teammates got upset with me back then. “Why are you throwing so hard, Drew?” I wasn’t doing it on purpose. Well, not all the time, anyway. But that throwing arm has always had fire in it. It is my gift.

  As I grew up, it was like the football became an extension of me. Pitchers talk about the almost-magical feel of the baseball in their hands, and quarterbacks over the years have tried to describe the sensation that comes over them when they’re holding a football. I can’t quite explain it, except to say it feels like there’s an energy source there. When a player picks up the ball, it’s as if it comes to life in his hands.

  I have a certain comfort level when I’m holding a football. It gives me a sense of strength but also responsibility. It clears my head and allows me to focus. When you have the ball, you feel like you are holding the sword of King Leonidas of Sparta, leading your team into battle. When you’re in control of this thing in your hands, you have the power to do great things and ultimately determine if your team wins or loses.

  For someone like me who had lived all of my conscious life with a ball in my hands, it was excruciating to suddenly be stripped of a football. This wasn’t just my job or my hobby; it was my love. And to add to the pressure, now I had a new team that was counting on me—in a city still recovering from a major disaster. The people were excited. The coaches were ready. Mentally and emotionally I was primed. But my doctors said my body wasn’t there yet. I wanted to turn the dogs loose, but they were holding me back, telling me to pace myself. They knew that at this point my biggest threat for reinjury was myself.

  I kept pushing Dr. Andrews to let me throw. After all, I had gotten out of the sling a week early. I had full range of motion about three weeks earlier than he’d predicted. I was continuing to progress further and further ahead of schedule. Call it the magic of God’s healing along with the commitment and desire he gave me. The other big motivator for me was fear of failure—fear that I wouldn’t be able to come back at all or that I would let down those who had invested so much in me. Every day I was confident I could come back even better, but there was still that sliver of anxiety in the back of my mind that gave me a drive to push myself each day. But Dr. Andrews just smiled and reminded me about the importance of letting the shoulder heal. “Remember, it’s not healed yet. Let the shoulder rehab take its course. No throwing for four months.” He wouldn’t budge on that one.

  The throwing motion he was concerned about was the shoulder’s external/internal rotation. Also, as I release the ball over my head when I’m throwing, my arm is put in a similar position to where it was when it dislocated. There were plenty of precautions to be taken, but that’s why we had worked so hard to gain range of motion and strength back in my shoulder. The biggest concern was that I would push my shoulder too far in the rehab process and accidentally pop an anchor, which would require another surgery and put me right back to square one. I could not afford any setbacks.

  At certain times during my rehab exercises, I would feel something stretching in my shoulder like rubber bands. It would actually make a squeaking sound, like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz or nails on a chalkboard. It’s a weird feeling to have something foreign inside your body holding you together, and it’s even stranger to be able to feel it working. But it was working, so I couldn’t complain. Without those anchors, I wouldn’t have had a chance.

  Kevin Wilk saw the progress I was making, and he knew it was time for me to pick up a ball again. There’s no test that can tell you i
t’s time to begin throwing, so he judged it all by feel. Shortly before the fourth month, ahead of schedule, Dr. Andrews gave me the go-ahead. I was finally ready to throw again!

  Transitions off the Field

  Things weren’t just coasting from that point on, though. I had my good days of rehab and throwing and those days when my arm would ache and fatigue very quickly. It was obvious that my shoulder still needed a lot of work. Because of my injury, Brittany and I had made the hard decision to put off having children for now. Brittany’s main objective was to take care of me and nurse me back to health. She stayed with me the whole time in Birmingham and would jokingly say, “I’m not ready to take care of two babies.” It was tough to put that dream on hold, though.

  Adding to our stress level was a move to a new city. We’d felt displaced for some time already after living with Brittany’s parents in Birmingham for the rehab. We felt a little like we were being tossed around on the waves, and we wanted to get settled, to find a place that felt like home.

  We did find a house to call home in New Orleans, and we loved it. But like most older homes there, it was going to take a lot of work and TLC. The house was in the Uptown neighborhood, a little north of the Mississippi River and one block off St. Charles, next to Audubon Park and Tulane University. Many of the homes there were built in the 1800s and are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. We chose that area because it was in the heart of the city, right in the thick of things. We wanted to embrace this community the way it had embraced us, so we decided to immerse ourselves in a neighborhood full of the culture and charm of the city.

  The home we bought had about $50,000 worth of roof damage from Katrina that the owner had fixed before we arrived. The floodwaters had stopped about six blocks away, but almost all the houses in the area—even those that didn’t have flood damage—were affected by the Category 5 hurricane. With any older home in the historical district, you have to deal with certain issues. Ours had been built in the late 1890s or early 1900s. It had suffered some damage from the storm, but there were also general repairs and renovations needed simply because of its age. We had a lot to accomplish to bring this house to life.

  This wasn’t just a dream for Brittany and me. Yes, we wanted to put down roots in this place. But we also were hoping to show the community that we were committed to the rebuilding process. Whether you live there or are just passing through, people see these old homes as part of the fabric of New Orleans. We wanted to get our hands dirty and let everyone know we were on board with the restoration, doing our part to bring the city back better than it had ever been before. When you move into a historical district like the Garden District or Uptown or Old Metairie or the French Quarter, you feel a sense of responsibility to be a great steward of the community and to leave whatever you touch better than the way you found it.

  We had planned for the renovation to take about eight months, which would have mirrored my projected comeback. Unfortunately, eight months stretched into eighteen—and then went even longer. We ended up spending two years on construction and rebuilding, and it was a long, grueling process. But we considered ourselves lucky. It was certainly nothing compared to what the folks whose homes had been destroyed went through. Many people had to evacuate the city they loved and were living elsewhere or were still living in temporary trailers the size of a closet. At least we had a roof over our heads and running water, despite the plastic coverings on the walls and the construction dust in the air. We actually spent the first six months in the house with no furniture—we slept on a mattress on the floor and ate dinner off TV trays while sitting in beach chairs. But with each new project we poured ourselves into, Brittany and I bonded more with this city. We were building something beautiful, one nail at a time.

  Throwing Again

  In the first several months of my rehab, I had been incredibly antsy to pick up the ball and toss it around. I knew I couldn’t do that, but it was a great temptation. Now that it was finally time for me to start throwing again, I knew I wasn’t going to simply pick up the ball one day and have everything back to normal. I had to start over. Completely. From the mechanics to the muscle memory, I needed to relearn how to throw a football. That might sound funny coming from a guy who had a football at the end of his arm most of his life, but it was true. Throwing the football, and even holding it, felt foreign to me at first.

  Throughout my rehab, I had tackled all my goals with enthusiasm and a positive mind-set. With the accomplishment of each short-term goal, I gained the confidence and strength I needed to pursue the next challenge. I had worked my way out of the sling, I had gained the full range of motion in my shoulder, and I had pushed myself as hard as I could without reinjuring my arm. I had followed all of Dr. Andrews’s advice, spurred on by Kevin Wilk’s tenacity to get me ready.

  The fear of failure was always in the rearview mirror chasing after me, forcing me to push myself further than I had ever gone before. I wore my Saints shirt to rehab at the start of every week as motivation—a reminder of how much New Orleans had invested in me. I could not let them down.

  My first toss was not with a full throwing motion. Nobody on the medical staff would let me do that—they knew better. My first pass was more of a pushing motion, like a shot put. I held the ball in front of me with both hands, like I was in my set position and ready to throw, and then I just pushed it to Kevin. Simple. Sort of like when you are throwing a ball to a little kid, very gently. It wasn’t strenuous at all. The feeling of throwing again was exhilarating, but at the same time the fear that tiny bit of motion brought was overwhelming.

  Oh, man, I need to be so careful, I thought. I’d better not hurt myself.

  Though my mind was strong and the rest of my body was in good shape, that little push let me know how weak I truly was. It confirmed how much damage had been done to my shoulder. Dr. Andrews was right—it wasn’t healed yet.

  Kevin and I would work for eight or nine hours each day going through different strengthening exercises. Looking back, I think he used the football as a carrot. If I successfully went through all the rigors of my exercises, we would head outside, where there was a small patch of grass about as big as a dining room carpet. It was a rather humbling experience to have people watching as they walked in and out of the building. Here I was, an NFL quarterback, tossing a football back and forth toddler style. Kevin would underhand a pass to me, and I’d push it back to him. Some people knew who I was and had heard what I was going through. Still, I’m sure they had no idea how difficult that little push with the football was for me. It looked like something a baby could do, but it took everything I had right then.

  That was such a picture of where I was compared with where I wanted to be. My desire was to walk back into a huge stadium with one hundred yards of turf, but I was on a tiny patch of grass on the lawn of a hospital building. Still, I was seeing progress. One small step at a time, I reminded myself. Trust the process.

  I remember standing on the lawn of the rehab clinic one day, looking down at that little patch of grass. I’d played in the Rose Bowl. I’d been to the Pro Bowl. I was a quarterback in the NFL. And yet in that moment I couldn’t have been more thrilled about throwing a football five yards. It might not have made sense to anyone else, but to me it was exhilarating. I finally had the ball back in my hands again.

  Gradually I moved from just shot-putting the ball to lifting the ball up to my right side and then pushing it. Occasionally Kevin would let me throw the ball a few times, and I would start to feel really good. I would think, Man, the shoulder is really coming back. This is great! That’s when I’d try to stretch it out a little and take the ball back a bit farther. Suddenly I would feel it—this pain deep in the tissue. It screamed out, Not yet! I had to listen to that voice many times and fight the urge to rush the recovery process.

  Anyone who has played sports at any level will tell you that you can’t focus on the bad things that might happen in a game or you won’t be able to functi
on properly when you are in the moment. When you climb into a NASCAR vehicle or strap on a helmet in a hockey game, you can’t worry about crashing or getting hurt. You must be able to relax and compete aggressively while approaching the game with great confidence. It is the fear of failure that drives you, but it is visualizing success that gives you the positive mind-set and confidence to feel like you can accomplish anything. In the end, when you know you have given everything you have and poured out your heart for the cause, then you can relax and let God take over. All God wants is for you to utilize the talents and abilities he has given you—to be the best you can be and to reach your full potential. All you have to do is give him the credit in return.

  Early in my rehab, the threat of reinjury was real, and I had to be careful. Something as simple as slipping in the shower or accidentally twitching while I slept could potentially damage the repair. Even when I began the throwing process, I had to take it one step at a time and gradually ramp up the throwing motion so I wouldn’t shock the shoulder too much. There was a balance to it all. As my physical therapist, Kevin helped me learn to listen to my body and figure out the difference between good pain and bad pain. There is the good pain of stretching and gradually breaking up the scar tissue from the surgery, and then there is the bad pain of your body telling you not to go any further or you will get hurt again. It takes wisdom and experience to know the difference. Kevin had that, and I was gradually catching on.

  At that stage of the rehab, when I was ready to relearn the mechanics of properly throwing the ball, I was really cautious. I would constantly ask Kevin, “How far can I take it back? How hard can I throw?”

  He was infinitely patient with me. When we began, he said, “We’re going to throw ten balls at five yards.” It was a meager start, but it felt so good to be able to have a tangible goal for the day, to hold the ball in my hands again.