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Now that Drew Brees has agreed to a five-year, $100 million contract , the New Orleans Saints -- and I’m talking players, coaches, owner Tom Benson, everyone else who works for the team and all of Who Dat Nation -- finally can start moving on.

Yes, there’s going to be some sense of “the new normal’’ in a season in which coach Sean Payton and linebacker Jonathan Vilma are suspended for the year, interim head coach Joe Vitt must hand off his temporary title for the first six games and general manager Mickey Loomis must step aside for the first eight. But simply having Brees happy and showing up for training camp provides a huge degree of normalcy, and that’s going to make a big difference.

Since his arrival in New Orleans with a chip on his shoulder in 2006, Brees has made the Saints look like a model franchise. No organization is perfect, and fans have found out plenty that they didn’t want to know about the Saints this offseason. But problems in New Orleans go back further than that. The defense wasn’t very good in Brees’ early years in New Orleans. In 2009, Payton brought in Gregg Williams to fix it. On the surface, Williams did. The Saints won a Super Bowl that season. But not everything was spectacular behind the scenes. Payton and Williams never were the best of friends, and that led to dysfunction that was masked nicely until the whole bounty drama unfolded.

That dysfunction was masked almost exclusively by one man -- Brees.



Drew Brees can save Saints again - NFC South Blog - ESPN

Rugby Saint II

I hope he's hitting the weights because it's all resting on his shoulders.

sharke

arguably worth all the money for that reason alone.

TheOak

I couldn't think of a better player or person to put that on...