Drew Brees reverses course, says he texted the Broncos about AFC Championship

The regular season consists of a unique rhythm. Stories emerge, they burn brightly, and they get supplanted by the next shiny object.

The shiny object in the aftermath of Week 1 came from an ESPN splash report that the Broncos spoke to Hall of Famer Drew Brees about playing for Denver in the 2025 AFC Championship.

Brees told Ed Werder that the Broncos contacted Brees. Broncos coach Sean Payton said that Brees contacted the Broncos. While not technically relevant to the question of whether the Broncos committed a tampering faux pas, given that Brees remains on the Saints’ reserve/retired list, the distinction could be relevant to whether the league, which enforces the tampering rules randomly and unpredictably, does anything about it.

Brees addressed the situation on the latest episode of the Let’s Go! podcast, where he’s not a regular presence.

“So my wrist and my shoulder, I don’t throw with my right side anymore,” Brees told Jim Gray. “I mean, I could throw it 10 yards and it’s with a lot of pain, you know? So that’s definitely not gonna get the job done. Now, my mind, my body, everything else feels great, but my right wrist, right shoulder wouldn’t allow it to happen. But did I think about it? Absolutely. 1000 percent. I would’ve loved to come back and play for the Broncos in the AFC Championship game, get my coach and a bunch of the other guys that I know in that organization, the Penner family, to the Super Bowl. Would’ve loved it.”

Here’s how it happened, from Brees’s perspective:

“The thought crossed my mind to the point where I got up the next day after — here’s the story. So I get the knock [from the Hall of Fame], I get the knock literally on Monday, January 19th. It was the day after the divisional round where the news had come out that Bo Nix had hurt his foot, he was gonna be out. So Jim Porter, who’s the president of the Hall of Fame, we’re there, we’re having this moment. Dan Fouts is telling me I’m in the Hall of Fame. And I look at Jim Porter and said, ‘Well, I guess this means I can’t go back and play for the Broncos this week.’ And he goes, ‘Actually, you can do whatever you want.’ He said, ‘Voting’s already been done, you’re in, you can do whatever you want.’

“And so I’m telling you when I say I like flipped the switch, I flipped the switch. Immediately texted Pete Carmichael and Joe Lombardi, my OC and quarterback coach with the Saints, they were with the Broncos. I said, ‘You guys need me this week?’ I said, ‘I might be able to be ready.’ And they’re like, ‘Are you serious? We’ll go down and tell Sean [Payton] right now.’ I said, ‘Wait, let me get up tomorrow. Let me give this thing a go.’ So I got up the next morning and I gave it a go. I had my 13-year-old son catching balls for me in the backyard. And man, it just was not happening with the right side. Left side, inside the 20 I would have been lethal. At least could have gotten them in and out of the right plays. But no, it wasn’t going to happen.”

The key, from the perspective of the rules and whether they’ll be enforced, is that (per Brees) he called the Broncos. Even if he said last week to Werder that the Broncos called him.

For now, there’s no reason to believe the league will do anything about it. (The NFL declined comment on the matter last week.) If it happens, the official story from Brees is that he made the first move about the possibility before quickly deciding it was an impossibility, physically.