Brees Deal Is Rare Good News for Saints

Brees Deal Is Rare Good News for Saints

By ZACH BERMAN
Published: July 13, 2012
After an off-season mired by scandal and suspension, the New Orleans Saints will enter training camp at the end of the month with a needed dose of good news. The team reached a long-term agreement with the star quarterback Drew Brees, who had remained unsigned the past few months.
That ended Friday. The sides reached agreement on a five-year, $100 million deal, according to a person with direct knowledge of the contract. Brees will earn $40 million in the first season of the deal.

“Deal is Done! Love you, Who Dat Nation. See you soon!” Brees wrote on his Twitter account Friday afternoon.

The Who Dat Nation, as Saints fans are known, has endured a turbulent four months. In March, the N.F.L. released the findings of an investigation that determined that the Saints oversaw a bounty program that offered money to players for hurting opponents.

The penalties included fines, suspensions and a loss of draft picks, including one-year bans for Coach Sean Payton and linebacker Jonathan Vilma, and an eight-game suspension of General Manager Mickey Loomis.



All the while, the subplot to the Saints’ off-season was the impasse with Brees, who has become a beloved figure in New Orleans while spurring a football renaissance.

Brees’s agent, Tom Condon, did not know whether a long-term deal would be reached by the July 16 deadline for players who have been designated with the franchise player tag by their team.

Brees was absent from the team’s minicamps and had expressed reluctance to sign the franchise tender, which would have compensated Brees with a one-year, guaranteed contract. He had sought a long-term deal, and Brees seemed to benefit from a favorable July 3 decision by an arbitrator who ruled that Brees was entitled to a 44 percent raise if he received the franchise tag again in 2013.

“It’s the unknown; that’s what drives both sides,” Condon said of the negotiations. “So there was a chance it wouldn’t get done, in which cases I think both sides get damaged badly. But I think this gives everybody an opportunity for a win and for success, and they’re happy with it and we’re happy with it.”

Pressure was clearly on the Saints, who need Brees perhaps even more amid this season’s turmoil. Brees’s arrival in New Orleans in 2006 helped usher in a new era for the Saints. They have had four winning seasons in six years, and they won their first Super Bowl.

Brees has averaged 4,732 yards and nearly 34 touchdown passes a season during that time. He is coming off perhaps his best season; he threw for an N.F.L.-record 5,476 yards and 46 touchdowns. New Orleans is also hosting the Super Bowl this season.

“Congratulations are in order for our organization, our city, Drew and Brittany and certainly for Mickey Loomis and his staff for all of the hard work put in to make this possible,” the Saints’ owner, Tom Benson, said in a statement, referring to Brees and Brees’s wife. “Now we must turn our focus to getting ready for the start of training camp and to keeping with our goal of being the first team in N.F.L. history to host and play in a Super Bowl.”

It seemed likely that some sort of resolution would be reached before the season; the Saints have operated with the expectation that Brees would be in uniform this year. The only other quarterback on the roster who has thrown an N.F.L. touchdown pass is Luke McCown, who has nine in eight seasons. Chase Daniel, Brees’s understudy, who has handled the first-team snaps in his absence, has never started a game.

Throughout the off-season, the assistant head coach Joe Vitt sounded confident that Brees would be in training camp. Vitt, who will serve as the acting head coach for most of the season, said about Brees in June: “What else is he going to do? He can’t sing or dance.”

If the Saints reported to training camp on July 24 without Brees — or even with Brees’s future in New Orleans uncertain — it would have further destabilized a franchise and a fan base in need of optimism. Brees’s new contract resolves that.

“He’s obviously thrilled to have the contract done,” Condon said. “And I know he’s anxious to rejoin his teammates.”