Drew Brees | New Orleans | Super Bowl | Brittany | National Football League
Related Topics
Related Articles
The Saint
by Joseph Guinto
All-Pro quarterback Drew
Brees has revived New Orleans's moribund football franchise
and lifted the city's battered spiits Here's where he makes
his Crescent City connections off the field. .
Illustration by Tim Bower
It was not a hot and humid and steamy and quiet New Orleans night
in the clichéd "Stanley Kowalski sweating though his undershirt"
sense, but rather a wet and wintry and cold and quiet New Orleans
night that Drew Brees returned to hours after falling one game
short of the Super Bowl. Luckily, the glum weather was good for
preserving the gumbo.
It was nearing three a.m. when Brees walked up the
steps of the Uptown New Orleans home he and his wife, Brittany, had
bought the prior winter. The couple - college sweethearts who met
at Purdue University - had spent almost a year restoring the
100-plus-year-old place, a project that included making $50,000 of
Hurricane Katrina-related roof repairs. Brittany was stuck in
Chicago, where victorious fans were cheering their Super Bowl-bound
Bears after the 39-14 dismantling of the Saints. Brees, though, had
taken the team charter back to New Orleans and driven himself home
from the airport. The drive, normally 30 minutes, had taken him
nearly two hours. Saints fans had lined the road from the team's
private air terminal, forming a two-mile collection of cars and
people and banners and umbrellas. Brees had inched along in his
car, signing autographs and shaking hands while people thanked him
for turning in the best season of his six-year NFL career - one
that earned him the starting quarterback's job in the Pro Bowl -
and for leading the Saints to their best season in the team's
39-year history. For hurricane-weary New Orleans, the Saints'
success could not have come at a better
time.
Share Your Comments