Drew Brees Finally Breaks Silence on Roger Goodell
The New Orleans Saints and their fans are still smarting over the idea that they might have been robbed of a chance to take on the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LIII on Sunday.
Indeed, anger over the no-call on blatant pass interference late in the NFC championship game against the Los Angeles Rams prompted calls to replay the final two minutes of the game, talk of lawsuits, cries that the league rigged the game with Southern California referees for a Southern California team, and planned boycotts of the Super Bowl as televisions across Louisiana go dark in protest of the grave injustice perpetrated upon the team.
Now the face of the franchise is speaking up about the issue.
Saints quarterback Drew Brees showed up on “The Dan Patrick Show” on Friday and sought to mollify fans by pointing out that had the Saints executed the gameplan better, they wouldn’t have been in a position to lose the game on a blown call.
But Brees did not let Roger Goodell off the hook. In breaking his silence on the controversy, Brees got a few good licks in at the NFL commissioner over his poor handling of the situation.
“I think that we all recognize that being in that position, you are the face of the league. And you have the responsibility to come out and address issues when they come about,” Brees told Patrick. “And I would say that on Monday or Tuesday after that game we all deserved a response of some kind. …
“I mean, do I really want to be in a position talking about this over and over again? No. But I have to stand up and do it because I have to represent my team, represent the Who Dat nation, and that’s my responsibility. So it’s the commissioner’s responsibility to do the same thing, and yet we don’t hear a peep for 10 days. And it’s because he has to do it now because he’s at the Super Bowl and he does his annual press conference.”
On the “Today” show on NBC, Brees similarly went after Goodell, but beneath the surface was that same sportsman’s grace in remembering that the ultimate responsibility for victory or defeat is in the hands of the players.
Brees said of Goodell, “I don’t think he really said much during most of that press conference.”
“But at the end of the day,” he told the “Today” hosts, “for us as players, we can only worry about the things that we can control. So you understand that officials have a very tough job, and there’s a lot of calls that are made and not made throughout the course of a game. It’s just tough when something that meaningful happens at the end of the NFC championship game that arguably would’ve sent us to the Super Bowl. And the call wasn’t made, and it was a very, very obvious call.”
Brees, who at 40 is one of the league’s oldest players, told all who asked that he fully intends to return for a 19th season next year, and if the 41-year-old Tom Brady can play in a Super Bowl and the 40-year-old Brees can come within a blown call by a referee of being Brady’s opponent, who’s to say he can’t?
All the same, Brees called the loss “arguably one of the most devastating losses for me in my career” and even said that his kids were brought to tears by watching their dad have the honor of a shot at a second Super Bowl ring ripped from him by officiating ineptitude.
The guy’s been a class act his entire career, and part of that class has always been his personal accountability, so he shined the light of truth on himself throughout his time on the interview circuit Friday.
On the subject of getting over such a devastating loss, Brees said on ESPN’s “First Take,” “Listen, it’s gonna take some mental toughness. But I believe we’re up for it. I was impressed with what our team was able to do this year coming off last year.”
Last season, the Saints lost to the Vikings in the playoffs on a play now simply dubbed “the Minneapolis Miracle.”
Brees continued, “I like where we are as a team. I like this window of opportunity that we’re entering too. … But we are gonna have to put this behind us. We are gonna have to allow this to make us stronger in some way, turn this into a positive somehow, some way. Which, it’s difficult. It’s not easy to do. This is arguably one of the most devastating losses for me in my career. And yet, you know what? I’m going to turn it into a positive.”
He also addressed criticisms that the Saints should have let time tick off the clock with running plays rather than going for the touchdown and ending up gifting the Rams extra time that made the game-tying field goal and ultimately the overtime 26-23 result possible.
“We knew we were gonna get all-out pressure. So we called a run play with a built-in, ‘Get it out to Mike Thomas,'” Brees said. “Listen, that’s a pass I gotta complete to him, in my mind. So I’m putting that on me. I’m not putting that on anyone else. The next play we had an opportunity to have a bigger play (on an Alvin Kamara run); we didn’t block it correctly. That’s on us.
“Then comes the third down. Man, we had a great play. We caught ’em off guard. Their nickel was out of position. He’s scrambling to cover Tommylee Lewis out of the backfield. He admitted in the press conference afterward that he intentionally hit him because that was better than giving up a touchdown. So that’s the chess match within the framework of the game.”
The nickel in question, the appropriately named Nickell Robey-Coleman, drew a fine from the league for the helmet-to-helmet hit but no flag. As calculated risks go, that might have been the greatest in sports since Luis Suarez’s intentional handball in the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
It was a dirty play, done on purpose — and it was probably the only thing keeping his team from losing everything.
Brees revealed to Patrick that the play Robey-Coleman illegally blew up was called “Buckhead,” after a popular Atlanta neighborhood that is a bustling party spot ahead of Sunday’s big game.
“Yeah, it was a play that was hopefully going to get us to Atlanta, right?” he said.
With the Super Bowl in Miami next year, Brees said, “I can almost guarantee we’ll have a ‘South Beach’ at some point next year.”
And maybe next year, the referees will call “South Beach” correctly.
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