A surprising high-profile factual dispute this week is about something that happened 19 years ago. That would be Drew Brees’ free agency decision during the 2006 NFL offseason. And Brees has now weighed in on the side of his former coach, Sean Payton, and against the man who once wanted to coach him, Nick Saban.
In the spring of 2006, Brees was a free agent for the first time. That came after a franchise-tagged year with the San Diego Chargers, which ended with him suffering a torn labrum and rotator cuff damage in their final game. Brees underwent surgery from Dr. James Andrews to repair that labrum, then was treated by Dr. Saby Szajowitz for rotator cuff damage, but there were questions about his health.
But that didn’t stop both the Miami Dolphins (then coached by Saban) and the New Orleans Saints from courting him after he turned down the Chargers’ five-year, $50 million offer (which would have only paid him $2 million in the first year, and came after they drafted Eli Manning and then traded him for Philip Rivers in 2004).
This week on The Pivot Podcast, Saban told Ryan Clark that Brees ending up with the Saints was because the Dolphins’ medical staff “failed him on a physical.” Clark presented that on X as “The deal was dead,” and talked about Saban doing Drew Brees’ agent Tom Condon a favor to keep the failed physical under wraps, which paved the way for him to sign with New Orleans.
But that’s very different from both the reporting at the time and the comments from many involved afterwards. And Payton weighed in on it on X with “A little bit missing in this piece…”
For some of what he thinks is missing, we can go to Payton’s comments over the years, including in the NFL Films documentary America’s Game: The 2009 Saints. There, he relayed a story of getting lost and accidentally driving Brees through the Lakeview neighborhood that was still heavily damaged from Hurricane Katrina the previous fall; he said he thought that would convince Brees to choose the Dolphins, and “I remember feeling like I ought to just drive this guy right to Miami right now.”
But Payton said the devastation actually sold Brees on being part of the city’s rebuilding efforts, and got him to pick New Orleans over Miami. And Brees backed that up in that documentary, saying the Dolphins were his “obvious choice” before that, but he saw the “deeper meaning” in signing with the Saints afterwards. That’s a long ways from Saban’s claim Miami wasn’t going to sign Brees and only kept the physical under wraps as a favor to his agent.
And Drew Brees relayed his version of the story again in a notable way on CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Tuesday. He doesn’t specifically address Saban’s podcast claim, apart from talking up his respect for Saban as a coach and how he was interested in playing for him. But he does say that while he had fun on his tour of New Orleans, including having famed chef Emeril Lagasse personally cook for him, he was still weighing the Saints against the Dolphins until that wrong turn. Here’s that clip, with the key part starting around 3:09:
“2006, I was a free agent leaving the San Diego Chargers, and I was coming off a really bad shoulder injury, to the point where I really wasn’t sure if I would play football again, or if I did, how effective I would be. I think the general sentiment around the league was that I wouldn’t be that effective, so I only had two real opportunities. It was the Miami Dolphins and the New Orleans Saints.
“And I’d gone to Miami and had an unbelievable visit. Nick Saban was the head coach there, believe it or not, before he went to Alabama. And here I was going to New Orleans, six months post-Katrina, the city still completely destroyed, some unknown head coach that they’d brought in from the Dallas Cowboys named Sean Payton, ‘Who’s this guy?’ And I had the most unbelievable time with my wife. Everything with Sean is great, love his coaching staff, he takes me to Emeril’s, Emeril Lagasse’s like ‘Hey, I’m going to cook your first meal for you here in New Orleans.’
“I’m like ‘This place is awesome, these people are so great.’ And now he’s driving us around neighborhoods to say ‘Despite the devastation, there are places to live and raise a family, I know you’re a young couple that’s thinking about all these things.’
“And everything could not have gone better until the way home, when all of a sudden, detour here, detour there. Sean doesn’t know where he is, he’s new to the city, he gets lost. Next thing I know, we are in the Lakeview neighborhood, which had been completely wiped out from the flood of the 17th Street Canal. And so you’ve got houses off foundations, a truck upside down in the living room. And all of a sudden, the car pulls around the corner and stops and I’m looking at my wife and saying ‘Are you seeing what we’re seeing?’ And I look up, and there’s a tugboat in the middle of the road.”
“And I look at Sean Payton, and he just drops his head. He calls our general manager, and is like ‘Yep, I’m lost, yep, Drew’s in the car, yeah, it’s bad.’ And in his mind, he goes, ‘I might as well just drive him to Miami right now because there’s no way he’s coming here.’ But in fact, it had the exact opposite effect; my wife and I said ‘This is so much greater than just football, this is a true call for us to be here and be part of the resurrection of one of America’s greatest cities.'”
There can obviously be different perspectives on the same event, and there have been many on this one over the years. The Dolphins’ medical staff has particularly taken heat there, and not just from Saban; there are several who have put out the line that Miami wasn’t going to sign Brees over medical concerns.
Saban perhaps took that to a new level this week with the claim the medical objections meant “the deal was dead,” though. (And that seems unusual; a team’s medical staff generally doesn’t have the final say on player moves, especially if the coach and/or general manager disagree. Failed physicals do sometimes scuttle deals, but that’s an organizational decision, not just a medical staff one.) But even more notable is the claim Saban kept those concerns quiet as a favor to Brees’ agent even though he wasn’t going to sign Brees himself. And Payton and Brees have both disputed that in notable, high-profile ways, with both saying Miami was still very much in the picture and it was an affirmative decision for Brees to choose the Saints over the Dolphins.
What’s also interesting on that front is to take a look at some of Brees’ previous comments on this. In his 2010 book with Chris Fabry, Coming Back Stronger, Brees discusses the exact timeline, saying he was leaning towards New Orleans, but told Condon he had to call Saban first to evaluate Saban’s commitment to him.
Brees’ recollection of that call has Saban still very interested in signing him, but at a lower number than he wanted given the medical concerns. And Saban’s lack of affirmative response to Brees’ question about belief in him firmly convinced Brees to go to the Saints instead, which he says he told Saban immediately. Here are pictures of that text, via an X user’s response to Payton:
Page 106 and 107 of coming back stronger pic.twitter.com/0IEJ2EdFYW
— Eddie (@elgringo_84) January 23, 2025
And finishes on 108 pic.twitter.com/Vq0n4wdpo3
— Eddie (@elgringo_84) January 23, 2025
And much of the reporting at the time backs this idea from Drew Brees that the Dolphins still wanted him even after that medical news, but weren’t willing to pay what he was looking for (showing, to him at least, some disbelief in how well he’d come back). An ESPN.com piece from Len Pasquarelli and John Clayton, published on March 14, 2006, stands out there, with it discussing how that day saw Brees sign with the Saints for six years and $60 million (with a $10 million signing bonus) and the Dolphins trade for Daunte Culpepper. Here’s what that says on Brees and the Dolphins:
The Dolphins decided to stop waiting for Chargers quarterback Drew Brees to lower his contract demands and opted to give the Vikings a second-round choice to acquire quarterback Daunte Culpepper.
…Miami coach Nick Saban revisited the trade talks with the Vikings on Monday, after Dolphins officials determined that the contract demands of Brees were more than they wanted to invest.
…Contract talks between the Dolphins and Brees have been stalled because the Saints had more money and more guarantees on the table.
…The Dolphins spent much of Monday putting Brees, who is currently rehabilitating the shoulder in Birmingham, Ala., under renowned orthopedist Dr. James Andrews, through a lengthy battery of tests. It is not known how much the results of those tests entered into the decision to pursue Culpepper instead.
It is possible that Saban’s account is correct and the Dolphins took the medical staff’s recommendation not to sign Brees as a firm reason to pull his offer, then kept that under wraps to avoid stopping him getting a contract elsewhere. But that reporting has them wanting Brees until the last minute, and only backing off because “the contract demands of Brees were more than they wanted to invest.” And that aligns with what’s in Brees’ book, and with some of what he and Payton have said over the years about Miami still chasing him.
Meanwhile, the reporting, and Brees’ book, does also indicate that he stayed at least somewhat interested in Miami even after that fateful car trip in New Orleans. And both include the detail that the Saints offered him more financially than the Dolphins did. So the true picture looks a little more complicated than him fully making up his mind on New Orleans over Miami at that instant of seeing the devastation.
But none of the at-the-time reporting, or even Drew Brees’ book comments, necessarily fully override that story from Brees and Payton. Many decisions are made for multi-factored reasons, and proving exactly what tipped the balance in someone’s mind is impossible from the outside. And, at the very least, Brees liked what he saw in New Orleans enough to keep the Saints in the picture rather than just going for whatever he could get from Miami.
The more notable point of factual dispute is if the Dolphins did actually pull out of the Brees sweepstakes over medical issues or just factor those issues into what they were willing to offer him. Saban’s account here has that as the former (and adds the detail of them keeping this under wraps as a favor to Brees’ agent), but the rest of the at-the-time reporting and looking-back statements seem to support the latter. And even Brees’ account of that phone call has Saban still trying to land him, just at a cheaper price (and perhaps without as much belief as he would have liked). So this all goes against Saban’s case that the Dolphins were never going to sign Brees due to the medical recommendation, and that they kept that quiet as a favor to Condon to let him get Brees to the Saints.
At any rate, it’s notable to see Saban’s account here take pushback not just from Payton on X, but from Brees in a high-profile network television appearance. And while he didn’t bring up Saban’s comments there, what he had to say did certainly contrast with them.
The appearance here overall is also relevant for discussions of Brees maybe finding his way back to broadcasting. While his first broadcasting stint with NBC didn’t go all that well (although some liked his work), Brees has repeatedly shown interest in going back into that arena over the last year. And high-profile guest spots, like on ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown and then on The Late Show here, have gone well and shown what he can bring to the table. In this appearance with Colbert alone, he showed off his ability to tell an engaging story with his relaying of that New Orleans trip, and he also provided a great breakdown of just what goes into a play call and what that means for each offensive group on the field.
We’ll see if Brees winds up getting another broadcasting shot or not. But the discussions around that, and around Saban’s current broadcasting work, add to the importance of this dispute between Brees and Payton on one side and Saban on the other side. If Saban’s account this week is completely true, and the Dolphins’ deal with Brees wasn’t happening and they told Brees that but kept it quiet so he could sign in New Orleans, that changes the Brees narrative and raises questions on his credibility. But if Saban is making part of that up, that raises questions on his own credibility.
Exactly what went down in Brees’ 2006 free agency isn’t fully clear. And the dispute on this may not lead to actual consequences for anyone. But it’s certainly notable to see such prominent football figures disagreeing on the facts in such high-profile forums. And it does show how sports history does still matter to the present day.
Drew Brees obviously wound up with the Saints, and that led to a Super Bowl and more. And that paved the way for his past media shot and maybe a further one. Meanwhile, Saban exited the Dolphins for Alabama after the 2006 season partly due to quarterback issues (Culpepper struggled that season and battled further injuries), and that story (and college football history) might have changed if Brees had chose Miami. And both Saban and Brees are prominent figures, so their high-profile disagreement on just what happened matters. And it’s notable to see that explored again as thoroughly as it has been this week.