Monday Morning Man: Drew Brees!

What a special guy New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees is.

Watching his interview with Katie Couric yesterday before the start of the Super Bowl made me realize just how much he means to his adopted city and how much it means to him. Then to have him lead the Saints to victory with such an amazing performance, it’s as if the script was written in heaven.

“We just believed in ourselves and we knew that we had an entire city and maybe an entire country behind us,” he said after being voted MVP in New Orleans’ 31-17 win over the Indianapolis Colts. “What can I say? I tried to imagine what this moment would be like for a long time, and it’s better than expected.”

“I’m just feeling like it was all meant to be. What can I say? The birth of my son, and in the first year of his life we won a Super Bowl championship.”

When Brees arrived in 2006, both he and the city were at a crossroad. A torn labrum in his throwing shoulder in the final game of the 2005 season when he was with the San Diego Chargers left him wondering whether his career was over. But Saints coach Sean Payton wanted him for the Saints. As Brees drove around the city during that wooing period, he saw residents struggling to cope with the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

He’d found the perfect place to begin his own comeback.

“Eighty-five per cent of the city was under water, all the residents evacuated all over the country, people never knowing if they were coming back or if New Orleans would come back,” he said after Sunday’s win. “But not only the city came back, and the team came back … when the players got there, we all looked at one another and said, ‘We’re going to rebuild together.’

“We leaned on each other,” Brees said, pausing as he choked up. “This is the culmination of that.”