Payton and Brees

by Jeff Duncan

  Thursday and Friday are structured similarly, but the game plan and film study change. On Thursday, the focus is third downs, and on Friday, it’s situational work: red zone; goal line; short yardage.

  The game plan is largely completed by Saturday. Brees and the quarterbacks meet to go over the script of plays for that week’s opponents. The team conducts meetings in the morning, then holds a light walk-through session on the field for 45 minutes or so and breaks for the day. Brees gets in his visualization session after the walk-through, then the team reconvenes at the facility for the charter flight out of town or at the team’s downtown hotel for home games. More meetings are held that night at the team hotel, including the “dot meeting,” where, if you recall, Payton and Brees go over the final script and Brees tells the head coach what plays he likes best for each game situation.

  “As I’ve gotten older, there’s more and more hours devoted to the recovery [of my body],” Brees said. “There’s no free time. I think my free time is maybe on the plane ride to fly to an away game or when I’m coaching my kids in flag football.”

  Brees’ rigid adherence to his schedule allows everyone in the building to know his location at any hour of the day in the building. Lombardi kids that he can set his watch to Brees’ routine. “If I walk in the film room on Wednesday morning at 7:00 am he’s probably going to be on the sub-blitz tape,” Lombardi said.

  Chase Daniel was so impressed by Brees’ weekly regimen that he copied it and took it with him to playing stints in Kansas City, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Few other players have had the temerity to follow Brees’ lead, although backup Taysom Hill had become the closest thing to an acolyte in recent years.

  “It takes discipline and mental stamina to keep doing something over and over again, day after day, year after year,” Lombardi said. “Maybe you could do it for football. I’m sure he does it for everything he does.”

  Brees indeed has a routine for almost everything, from his pregame warm-up to the way he puts on his uniform. His pregame warm-up always begins with a jog around the perimeter of the playing field. He then goes through the exact same exercise and calisthenic routine at the exact same spot on the field. Game after game, it’s the same 20-minute warm-up. He never deviates.

  He starts each practice the same way. After a quick warm-up, Brees goes to a specific spot on the sideline and touches his foot to it. He leaves his spot on the sideline, and waiting for him right where it is supposed to be is a water bottle left by a member of the staff. Brees picks it up and gives himself three squirts before starting practice. In the weight room, he does exactly the number of core-exercise reps to correspond to that year’s Super Bowl. During the 2018 season, he did 53 reps. In 2019, it was 54.

  Newcomers to the Saints program are often caught off-guard by Brees’ habits. At first, they seem bizarre, borderline maniacal. How he wears his helmet during the daily post-practice quarterback challenge competition with teammates or climbs the pocket during non-padded, no-contact walk-through drills in practice. How he performs his stretches the exact same way every day at practice and jogs to one end of the field while everyone else is on the other end. How during his visualization sessions he barks out the cadence the exact same way he does to teammates during a game.

  “When I got here, I was thinking, ‘Is this guy a robot?’” Saints receiver Keith Kirkwood joked.

  Hill had the same thoughts after he joined the Saints from the Green Bay Packers via waiver claim in September 2017.

  “I thought, ‘What in the world is he doing?’” Hill said, laughing. “When I saw the way that he prepared, I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it. This guy still prepares this way when he knows the offense as well as he does, and he knows these defenses better than the defenders themselves. But that’s just a testament to Drew. He always wants to be prepared. He’s going to do everything he can to allow himself to be successful and his teammates around him to be successful.”

  But Hill and Kirkwood, like the rest of their teammates, quickly learned there was a method to Brees’ madness.

  “There’s not any rock that is not overturned,” Hill said. “Everything he does, every single throw in practice, is deliberate. That’s what it boils down to. His ability to be deliberate in everything he does. If you think about it, that can be exhausting. But he does it.”

  Brees’ zealous commitment to excellence reminds Lombardi of a phrase used in U.S. Army Special Forces: how you do anything is how you do everything.

  “I don’t think it’s ever applied to anyone more than it does him,” said Lombardi, a graduate and former tight end at the U.S. Air Force Academy. “I bet there’s nothing that he doesn’t do with the same approach. I bet he brushes his teeth with the same routine. ‘How can you be the best tooth brusher you can be? I’m going to do it.’ I’d like to say I’ve got a way of doing business, but when I go play golf, I could give a shit. He cares a lot about everything he does. And there’s a purpose. ‘All right, how do I do this best?’”

  Joe Brady, the Carolina Panthers offensive coordinator, said he constantly told his players at LSU about Brees’ extraordinary work regimen and commitment to excellence. He used Brees as a role model to inspire his players and motivate them to adopt better practice habits. If Brees can do it, he says, they can, too.

  “Everything matters to him,” Brady said. “The way he watches film and how you know at 6 am he’s going to be in the tight ends room at that exact time watching film. How when he approaches that huddle for a walkthrough and OTAs it’s just like he would be doing if it was the Super Bowl. Everything matters to him.”

  Payton compares Brees’ preparation habits to a fighter pilot.

  “His mental preparation during the week and just the exhausting nature of what that takes is amazing to watch,” Payton said. “There has been a ton of great players that have played in this league and there’s certain ways that they prepare and that’s his formula. He’s a tireless worker, and the attention to detail and the little things are important to him. He gets out of whack when the routine’s off a little bit.”

  Brees’ weekly focus and concentration set the example for the entire team—players, coaches, even people in the organization’s business operations. His attention to detail and high standard of excellence are infectious and force others to raise their own standards to keep up with him.

  “The way he does everything, how he handles his business, the way he’s always the last one to leave the field—he never stops, he’s just relentless,” All-Pro receiver Michael Thomas said. “All of that is contagious to me. You want to try to perfect your game so that one day you can be an elite guy like him.”

  Alvin Kamara started following Brees’ work and study habits shortly after he joined the organization in the spring of 2017. He’d never seen a player work as hard as Brees. His work ethic resonated with the star running back and motivated him to work just as hard at his craft.

  “I kind of took a step back and was like, ‘All right, well, if I want to be the best, then I gotta know what the best knows,’” Kamara said. “And I think Drew is probably one of, if not the, smartest people playing football right now, so I was like, ‘All right, if I can get myself to try to be as in tune to the game as Drew…I can only get better. That’s why he’s been so successful, because it’s like he has an answer for everything. It’s like the kid you hate in class because he always knows the answer. That’s Drew—but I love him, because he’s my quarterback.”

  To reach the highest level of professional sports, players and coaches must have exceptional talent and work ethic. What separates Brees is his almost superhuman mental stamina, the ability to continue to study and process information, hour after hour, day after day, week after week.

  “It’s been the same way since he got here,” said Strief, who joined the Saints at the same time as Brees in 2006 and has been with him as a teammate or coworker for his entire ten
ure in New Orleans. “It’s how he was the day he got here in 2006. Some of the routines he has have not changed. You don’t run into people in your life that can do that. Most people mentally just kind of exhale and let up. He doesn’t have that mechanism in his body. It’s a super unnatural ability that he has. He does the same stuff today that he was doing five years ago—at the same speed, at the same tempo, with the same intensity. It’s the healthiest case of OCD I’ve ever seen. It’s so productive. And it’s something that most normal people could never maintain. I can’t do that. It’s what makes him exceptional.”

  House, Brees’ performance coach, has scientific testing to confirm Strief’s analysis. Using a device called a FocusBand, House and his staff have measured Brees’ brain activity during various activities: workouts, practice, interacting with friends and family, playing with his kids. Remarkably, Brees’ brain produced similar levels of output in each instance. There was no difference between the way he attacked his daily workout and the way he enjoyed time with his loved ones.

  “When he works out with his new receivers [in San Diego], and he’s in a teaching mode, his hertz of electrical activity in the teaching mode is the same as when he’s working with his family,” House said. “And his hertz of electrical activity when he’s working with his family is the same as when he’s playing on a Sunday afternoons. He shows up with X amount of motivation, X amount of effort and gives it to me every fucking time in whatever he’s doing. We call it compartmentalization. He’s a Renaissance man. He’s special, not just in football. He’s special in the big picture, in life, business, family, and fame.”

  This remarkable endurance has allowed Brees to maintain the same schedule for his entire tenure in New Orleans, 14 years and counting. Even after all the wins and records and accomplishments, he has refused to shortchange the process. Over the years he has fine-tuned his routine to incorporate what works for him and eliminate what doesn’t. To create more time for his growing family, he’s been forced to alter or reduce his demanding schedule. For example, he only attended a handful of the weekly dinners with his offensive linemen on Thursday nights in 2019, events he attended regularly earlier in his career. But otherwise, it’s the same regimen he followed when he arrived in New Orleans in 2006.

  “I have a definite routine and it takes a lot of time,” Brees said. “I know where I’m going to be at a specific time. I know what I’m going to be doing; I know what needs to be accomplished for me to feel confident and go out there and play at the highest level. I understand the amount of work and effort that it’s going to take to accomplish the things I want to accomplish. I’ve always had a goal that I want to continue to get better each and every year. That’s what drives me. That’s what I work so hard for.”

  House has worked with countless elite athletes over the years. During his second career as a performance coach, his roster of quarterback clients includes Tom Brady, Matt Ryan, Eli Manning, Cam Newton, Dak Prescott, Alex Smith, Carson Palmer, Jared Goff, Andrew Luck, Jimmy Garoppolo, Carson Wentz, and Tim Tebow. He’s also worked with professional golfers and former Major League Baseball pitchers like Nolan Ryan, Randy Johnson, Kevin Brown, and Rob Nen.

  “A lot of people don’t understand how deep the work ethic is,” House said. “Drew doesn’t do stuff that is marginal in the contribution end of things. Everything he does is with a purpose. As you get more experienced, you know what you don’t have to do. The attention to detail, that’s what amazes me about Drew and [Nolan Ryan]. They’re special.”

  Brees doesn’t know any other way. For him, it’s the only way he can properly prepare himself to play at an elite level on game days. He’s been doing it this way for so long it’s become second nature. He knows it’s not the easy way. He knows it comes with significant sacrifice to his family and friends. But for him, the reward is worth the investment.

  “It’s a grind mentally,” Brees said. “That’s why when your season ends, you just want to escape for at least a month and just get away. But it’s also part of the fun. There’s a lot of satisfaction and a very rewarding feeling when you know the time and effort that you put into preparation—those long hours, long days, both physically and mentally—and you come out on game day and you watch these things happen that you visualized, that you played over and over in your mind. And you have that success and you watch young guys gain confidence and come out of their shells, become the players that you always hope they can be, too, there’s something invigorating about that, too. That’s what keeps you going.”

  Dome-ination:

  2011 Indianapolis Colts, New York Giants

  Two years after dispatching the New York Giants and New England Patriots in memorable fashion, Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints offense produced two more spectacular displays.

  In Week 7 of the 2011 season, the Saints destroyed the Indianapolis Colts 62–7 on Sunday Night Football, setting franchise records for points and scoring margin. With Payton sitting in the coaches’ box because of a broken leg suffered in a game the previous week in Tampa, Florida, Pete Carmichael called the plays and the Saints scored on their first nine series and recorded a then-franchise-record 36 first downs. Brees completed 31 of 35 passes for 325 yards and five touchdowns before yielding to Chase Daniel late in the third quarter. The point total tied for the most in any NFL game since the league merger in 1970. While impressive, the blowout came against a winless Colts team with Curtis Painter at quarterback in place of the injured Peyton Manning. Five weeks later, the Brees-led Saints delivered another jaw-dropping performance, this time against a 6–4 New York Giants team.

  The Giants came to New Orleans on a mission. Their backs were to the wall. They’d lost two consecutive games and knew a home game with the Green Bay Packers awaited the following week. If ever a Week 12 game could be considered a “must-win,” this was it.

  The Saints, meanwhile, were coming off a bye, a holiday, and the emotional Gleason Gras celebration Sunday. The potential for distraction was there, but the Saints never showed signs of a holiday hangover. They were efficient and enthusiastic from the start. They gained 354 yards in the first half and recorded touchdown drives of 80, 80, and 88 yards. They took a 21–3 lead into the break, and it could have been more had they converted a fake field goal attempt on their opening possession. The Saints’ first 11 drives ended this way: downs, touchdown, punt, touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, punt, touchdown, downs, and touchdown. This against a Giants defense that would finish the season ranked third overall and first in scoring, allowing a meager 14 points a game.

  The 577 yards were the most the Giants had surrendered in their modern history. The last time they allowed that many yards in a game was in 1948, when the Chicago Cardinals totaled 579 yards in a 63–35 win at the Polo Grounds.

  “The statistics are alarming to me,” NFL analyst Jon Gruden said during the ESPN broadcast. “I’ve never seen offensive numbers thrown up like Drew Brees, Sean Payton, and the New Orleans Saints. The statistics are amazing. When you get a great quarterback and a great coach and you surround them with great skills players, this kind of thing is possible.”

  Brees completed 24 of 38 passes for 363 yards and four touchdowns. He wasn’t sacked and was hit just four times in 41 dropbacks. His eight-yard scoring run in the third quarter was part of a rushing attack that netted 205 yards and averaged 6.8 yards a carry.

  “There’s that confidence that players around him have, and obviously we have in him,” Payton said afterward of Brees. “He made some fantastic throws tonight.”

  The blowout loss was a wake-up call for the Giants, who went on to win seven of their next nine games and upset the New England Patriots 21–17 in Super Bowl XLIV.

  15. Fighting the Stereotype

  Luke McCown remembers the moment Drew Brees convinced him he was inhuman.

  To be precise, it was at the 2:55 mark of the third quarter in the Saints’ Week 10 game against the
San Francisco 49ers on November 9, 2014. On a third-and-6 play from the 49ers’ 11, something very rare happened as Brees retreated into the shotgun formation. The 49ers fooled him. They overloaded their defensive alignment to the strong side of the Saints offensive formation, then attacked with a blitz from the weak side. Normally Brees is an expert at identifying such tactics. But this time, the Niners’ subterfuge worked.

  Safety Eric Reid and linebacker Michael Wilhoite both went unblocked as they converged at full speed on Brees in the Saints backfield. The pair was on him so quickly Brees barely had reached the top of his three-step drop when he was forced to react. Wilhoite had a direct bead on Brees and went in for the kill. Brees instinctively planted his right foot in the turf, juked to his left, and dipped his right shoulder as Wilhoite flew by to his right. The move took Brees directly into the path of the onrushing Reid, who never broke stride and lowered his head to deliver a knockout blow. Brees instinctively pirouetted at the 20-yard line and spun in a complete 360 to his right, causing Reid to completely whiff and take out the befuddled Wilhoite at the same time. Brees then re-gathered himself, reset his eyes downfield, and lofted an 11-yard touchdown pass to Jimmy Graham in the end zone.