Drew Brees will likely be calling it quits after this season, with reports suggesting that the New Orleans Saints quarterback is set to retire after 20 years in the NFL.
“Everybody expects” that Drew Brees will retire after this season, per @AdamSchefter pic.twitter.com/gHRTa5mr1n
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) January 3, 2021
As The Spun noted, Brees is expected to hang up his cleats and pursue a career in broadcasting once this campaign comes to a close.
“According to ESPN insider Adam Schefter, the league-wide expectation is that Brees will officially retire after the 2020 season is over,” the report noted.
Schefter went into further detail on Sunday NFL Countdown, noting that many expected Brees to call it quits in the last offseason, but he came back for one last run at a Super Bowl. His retirement now seems more certain as Brees has reportedly already lined up a post-NFL gig.
“They thought that last year and he surprised them in March by deciding to come back,” Schefter said, via Bleacher Report .
“This time, he’s got a signed contract with NBC. This time, he’s another year older. This time, he’s played through the 11 fractured ribs, the punctured lung. It’s been a difficult, physical season and I think most people still believe that this will be the final season for Drew Brees in New Orleans and in the NFL before he turns to the broadcast booth.”
It could be a challenging conclusion to what is a certain Hall of Fame career. The Saints enter the last week of the 2020 campaign in contention for the top overall seed in the NFC, but they will need to rely heavily on Brees and the passing attack after running back Alvin Kamara tested positive for COVID-19. As ESPN reported, the team’s entire running back position group will be out as well due to being in close contact with Kamara prior to his positive test.
Along with Kamara, backups Latavius Murray and Dwayne Washington, as well as fullback Michael Burton, were placed on the reserve/COVID-19 list this weekend, ESPN reported. The Saints will also be without running back coach Joel Thomas, who did not travel with the team and will not coach in Sunday’s contest.
If the reports that Brees will retire are true, he would go out with plenty of game left in him. As Bleacher Report noted, he showed some signs of slowing down in the last year, but the 41-year-old was still one of the top quarterbacks in the league in 2020. He has been slowed more by injury in the past few years, however, losing chunks of both the 2019 and 2020 campaigns.