Drew Brees Wants To Come Back ... To The Booth, But This Time, He Calls The Schedule
NEW ORLEANS - You know when people say they're quitting a job, so they can spend more time with their family, when really they were fired. And they just say that.
That's what former Saints quarterback Drew Brees said after one year as an NFL studio analyst and part-time game analyst when he left NBC following the 2022 NFL season. Only, he was telling the truth. He was not fired. He left, though NBC did not exactly miss him.
He was not very good at the new job, and he really did miss his wife Brittany and their four young children ages 15, 13, 11 and 9, and in particular their football games.
Former New Orleans Saints QB great Drew Brees speaks to fans at a Saints game in the Superdome after his retirement following the 2021 season. (Getty Images)
"Honestly, I had such a good time," Brees said over the weekend while in New Orleans for the announcement that he would be inducted into the Saints' Hall of Fame. "It was awesome. The only problem was just the travel schedule. I traveled for 26 consecutive weekends, and I missed all my kids' games. So, I'm like I can't do that. That lifestyle doesn't work right now."
And it still doesn't. The kids will still be playing football and other sports this year in San Diego, where the Brees family lives most of the year. But Brees now wants back into the booth - only on his terms and his dates.
"Yep, I said it," he said on X on Saturday, but notice his tweet mentions "SNF (Sunday Night Football), MNF (Monday Night Football) or Thursday Night Football."
He doesn't want the grind of Saturday or Sunday games. NBC mistakenly had Brees on primarily as a studio analyst on Sunday nights for "Football Night In America" and analyzing Notre Dame games on NBC. He was analyst for only two NFL games, which was the main thing he wanted to do.
NBC Used Drew Brees Wrong
Bad use of personnel by NBC, which Brees rarely saw while playing under Sean Payton from 2006-21 and leading the Saints to the Super Bowl title in the 2009 season along with seven NFC South crowns and nine trips to the playoffs. He is expected to be a first ballot Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee in 2026.
"The thing that I wanted to do most that I felt like I could bring the most value to was broadcasting NFL games," he said. "And it was the thing I had the least opportunity to do. Just two NFL games - eight weeks apart."
That's like being a backup, which he was.
"I would love to broadcast NFL games at some point again," Brees said. "I think I could be the best at it."
Brees was not that good in the two games he did, drawing a lot of criticism during and after his broadcast of the Oakland Raiders-Cincinnati Bengals playoff game.
"The biggest problem with Brees was that he was beyond vanilla and offered very little to the broadcast," Andy Nesbitt of USA Today wrote in January of 2022. "He didn't want to be critical of any players, refs, or anything that an analyst should be critical of."
One person on X said, "Drew Brees is so corporate, it hurts."
Of course, that did tend to work for the late Frank Gifford, who did ABC's Monday Night Football games for nearly 30 years. But he was the play-by-play man.
Brees tended to be too robotic as well and did not show much personality, which he showed for years in interviews - on and off the record.
Joe Buck, who does Monday Night Football games on ESPN after 24 years at FOX Sports, said recently that Brees deserves another shot.
"If there's anybody who was ever created in a computer to be a top analyst at a network, I think it's Drew Brees," Buck said on his "Sports Media Podcast" and added that Brees got a "raw deal" at NBC.
"I would love to see him get another chance at that," Buck said. "He got two games, and he was working with a new crew, and everybody expects brilliance."
Brees would need to be more opinionated, though, if his second chance works. He is a brilliant guy with an analytical mind who could be an excellent coach. In the booth, he will just need to tell it like it is.