For Drew Brees and the Saints, what's the cost of loyalty?
It’s been seven years since Drew Brees led the New Orleans Saints to their first and only Super Bowl win.
A lot has changed since then: The Saints aren’t Super Bowl contenders anymore -- they’re hardly playoff contenders in 2016 -- but Brees has somehow, some way remained one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks.
His performance has been prolific and consistent — he’s averaged 5,000 yards passing over the last five seasons, with a completion percentage of 68, while throwing for an average of 38 touchdowns to 16 interceptions.
Brees is the New Orleans Saints. He’ll be the first player mentioned when you invoke the team's name in the years to come — he’s the kind of player that winds up with a statue outside the main gate of the stadium.
But Brees is 37, and when his contract is up -- it expires at the end of the season -- he’ll be 38.
Brees has been paid stellar money for his stellar performances over the last five seasons -- the deal that is about to expire will have paid out $100 million -- but Brees is on the record saying that he believes that he can play until 45 and that he wants to retire a member of the team with which he is synonymous.
Statistically speaking, if Brees maintains this level of performance into his 40s, he’ll be the first in NFL history to do so. In total, there have been 18 quarterbacks who have been on NFL rosters in their 40s, and only two -- Brett Favre at age 40 in 2009 and Warren Moon at age 41 in 1997 -- were worth putting out on the field, and that’s being liberal with valuations.
Is Brees going to buck the trend? Is he going to be the first to keep his prime going into his 40s, or will he be like every other quarterback the NFL has seen and see his production become indirectly correlated with his proximity to the big 4-0?
Or, a better question: what’s the cost of loyalty?
Reportedly, it’s $60 million -- the guaranteed cash in a four-year, $100 million deal. That’s what Brees is reportedly seeking, and because the Saints have no leverage with him in contract negotiations -- Brees has been franchise tagged twice, so if the Saints were to slap him with a tag for the third time, they’d have to pay him roughly $43 million in 2017 — that’s what he’ll probably get.
The only other option for the Saints is to let Brees walk.
That’s what they should let him do.
The NFL is a salary capped league, it's not going to see a massive, NBA-like salary cap jump anytime soon. The pie is going to remain roughly the same size for the remainder of the decade. For the Saints, a team mired in mediocrity, Brees’ slice of that pie is too large.
A frequent refrain around the league is that “it’s not Brees’ fault the Saints aren’t a playoff team anymore.” In a way, that’s true -- he is still performing at a high level, and the Saints’ offense continues to be one of the league’s best. The problem is defense, and Brees doesn’t have anything to do with that.
But in a way, it is Brees’ fault. The quarterback's cap hit this season is $30 million, or 19 percent of the total salary cap -- the largest such proportion in the league. The second-highest number belongs to Eli Manning -- he takes up 14 percent of the Giants’ salary cap.
The Saints have made dozens of bad personnel decisions over the last half-decade, but Brees’ massive salary handicaps New Orleans’ ability to build a successful team around him -- particularly on the defensive side of the ball, where free agency has a larger impact. Saints coach Sean Payton has final say over all personnel decisions in New Orleans, and he’s an offensive guy -- you know where he’s going to want to spend the money that remains after Brees is paid.
It’s hard to argue that Brees hasn’t lived up to his contract over the last five years, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it was a smart signing for the Saints. Had New Orleans removed him from the books, they likely would have taken a much different approach to building their roster -- perhaps a more balanced (see: winning) approach. Now, they face that decision again, with the stakes even higher.
Of the 10 largest quarterback cap hits in the NFL, only two -- Ben Roethlisberger and Carson Palmer, both $20 million plus guys -- made the playoffs last season. Tom Brady’s cap hit is less than half of Brees’ and his contract is structured to almost assuredly see him retire at age 40.
The Saints are engaging in contract negotiations though -- they’re reportedly on the precipice of giving Brees what he wants, extending the team’s purgatory for another four years or possibly plunging it deep into a hole it will take years from which to rebound.
What happens when Brees stops producing? His salary cap hit won’t go away overnight. How long do the Saints keep trotting him -- the face of the franchise -- out there to poison an offense that wears the same jersey as a bad defense? Once it’s over, how many draft classes will it take to get the Saints back to respectability?
The current formula for the Saints -- pay Brees a lot and stretch dollars to fill 52 other roster spots -- doesn’t work. Brees will stop working soon, too -- time is undefeated and football is an attrition sport. Brees might have a couple of good years left in him, but the history of football shows that he won’t make it to the end of his next contract with his pride intact. He might not make it to the end of this season.
Ask the Los Angeles Lakers how much they enjoyed the final well-compensated years of Kobe Bryant’s career.
Sentiment is for losers and only the foolhardy try to prolong the inevitable.
You can't buy back time, but the Saints will probably buy another four years of Brees anyway. Ultimately, they’ll pay for it with more losses.
