I'm not sure that Brees was "officially" franchised. The Saints were ready to franchise him, but the NFLPA asked Brees and his agent to challenge the tag, which the Saints (and the NFL front officer) claimed was a first year tag. The Chargers had tagged him the previous season and the league claimed that the Chargers' tag shouldn't count as it was under a different franchise. The NFLPA claim it shouldn't matter which team applied the previous tag. This was very similar to the Graham/NFLPA versus Saints/NFL test case.

The NFLPA won the case and the tag was never officially applied on Brees. The Saints signed Brees to the new deal immediately after the decision ... as expected.