With Drew Brees’ media comeback seemingly beginning, everyone’s crafted their opinion of him re-entering the foray.
Brees has been adamant about wanting a second chance after his failed NBC stint and has acquitted himself quite nicely since then. He made a one-off appearance on ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown and will be part of Netflix’s studio coverage for the network’s two Christmas games next week.
Suffice it to say, Brees is trying to make the most of his second chance — one that his former teammate, Jonathan Vilma, believes he’ll be “much more relaxed” this time around.
During a recent Q&A with Sports Lens’ Kyle Odegard, Vilma opined on Brees’ broadcasting career. He noted that while Brees did call a playoff game with NBC, which was the nail in the coffin for his tenure at the network, Vilma didn’t get a chance to listen to it.
Still, Vilma offered some valuable advice, drawing from his own experience as an NFL on Fox analyst.
“I would say one: the fans are always uber-critical of the play-by-play when calling the games, right? So if you know that they’re going to hang on to your every word, whether it’s good or bad, you just go out and be relaxed and call it,” Vilma told Odegard. “…I always tell people I’m talking for three hours straight. I’m going to mess something up. It is what it is.
“And so as long as you don’t get engulfed in that one time, you should have said something differently or whatever it is — and you just continue the flow of the game. I think people also recognize that the knowledge is there, the comfort is there and the delivery is also equally important.”
Part of what Odegard asked Vilma is if broadcasting is like football in that he can go back to the tape and evaluate his weaknesses to improve. Vilma responded that Brees, being a workaholic, likely watches his tape multiple times to perfect his performance.
“I know he’s going to be much more relaxed,” Vilma added of his former teammate. “I know he’s going to be very natural. I know that he’s just going to really just enjoy it because, at the end of the day, there was nobody better than Drew, and it may be a little biased, but there was nobody better than Drew at that quarterback position. And I know people reading will think it’s Tom Brady, but I don’t care; I’m biased!
“So let that come out. If I’m Drew Brees, let that come out. Just go out, be natural, be relaxed. And look, if you flub something, move on, right? If you mess something up, who cares? Because it’s three hours of football. It’s meant to be fun. It’s not meant to be perfect. Just go out and enjoy it.”
So, for Vilma, Brees’ second chance isn’t about being flawless—it’s about having fun, staying true to who he is and letting the same confidence and poise that made him one of the better quarterbacks of his generation shine through in the booth.
Easier said than done.
But Brees seems poised to be a different, more natural version of himself this time around.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.