Quarterback Drew Brees retired after the 2020 season. For a moment in 2021, he flirted with the idea of returning to the Saints. It hasn’t been an issue since then.
Brees stated during an appearance on ESPN Radio that a comeback was out of the question because he could no longer throw a football.
“Look, I’ll tell you a little fact,” Brees said, via ESPN.com. “I don’t throw with my right arm anymore. My right arm doesn’t work. So now when I throw in the backyard, I throw left-handed.”
Brees, who now plays pickleball, said that wasn’t a problem because he didn’t have to put his arm over his head.
The condition stems from the injury he sustained in his final game with the Chargers at the conclusion of the 2005 season. The dislocated shoulder required surgery and rehab and led the Dolphins not to sign him as a free agent. The Saints decided to roll the dice and it paid off.
Brees said the injury “put me on the fast track to a degenerative shoulder and all sorts of arthritic changes.”
He added that if he could pitch, he “would definitely still play.”
Former Dolphins coach Nick Saban, who was in charge during his two years with the team in Miami, has consistently maintained that he was not to blame for the decision not to sign Brees. In 2021, Saban blamed the decision not to sign Brees on a doctor “who couldn’t tell his ass from a handful of sand.”
Nonsense. If Saban wanted Brees, Saban would have had Brees.
Brees made the most of his right arm, won a Super Bowl and built a Hall of Fame career. He certainly wouldn’t trade that for the ability to throw a football with his right arm in his early 40s.