The Josh Innes Show - Drew Brees HOF Part 1: What He Meant To NOLA

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

I don't know that an athlete meant more to a city than Drew Brees meant/means to New Orleans. Has there ever been a situation even remotely close to this? Let's break it down. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, everybody. Welcome in all up, Ennis. Glad you guys are there. How about Drew Breeze making the Hall of Fame first ballot, as he should? I know there are some people who are iffy on Breeze because he didn't win as many championships or whatever. And I also think that's kind of bullshit. Like, I think that you don't have to win championships to be a Hall of Famer. But it's like people hold it against him that, you know, he didn't win five championships.

He won one. Should they have gone to more or had a chance to play for? for more probably I mean you could circle a couple of times that they really blew it and part of and not all that's on him by the way like you can go back and look at the the playoff game against San Francisco back in I guess it would have been 12 or 11 I guess it was the 10 season and the 11 game maybe the game is an 11 or 11 and 12 one of those I mean the guy went out there and just slung it but they got

out dueled by Alex Smith you know is that your fault that you go out and score 40 something points and still lose because your defense is garbage and can't stop Alex Smith. Is that your fault? You know, you go to the Beast Quake game. Like that team was a good team that could have won that and lost the Beast Quake game. And then, of course, the Super Bowl that was stolen from us with the Rams, which is the most heartbreaking sports thing that I've ever witnessed in my life as a sports fan. There's nothing that's ever come close.

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And I remember throwing that on the air. I was like, hey, who knows, maybe Mattress Mac will just send us to the game. And then, like, I get a call. Hey, man, I got you some tickets. Do you want to go? And I'm like, fuck, yeah, I want to go to the game, you know? But there will be nothing that will feel that way again. and there's nothing that I'll ever experience that will be that way again.

And I've been in stadiums for big games that my teams are part of. And I've watched them win some big games. Like I watched LSU win the national championship in 2007. But, you know, that was a weird one because that team was good, but they had lost two games. And they had to have a lot of wacky shit happen at the end of the season just to get in. And, you know, it was a miracle for them to get into the championship game. And, like, it was fine. But, like, as far as being in attendance for something,

and something mattering and being as big of a heartbreak as it was. And going from the high of the high to the low and the low, it would have been that game. And I can't imagine I will ever experience anything like that ever again, notably because I'm just not as passionate about a lot of this shit as I was. Even then, that was in 2019, early 2019, I guess. And that was, you know, like I was still really into it. I was in my early 30s. And I just, I had a passion that was.

still there. Who knows? Maybe if the Saints get good again. Like, I love being passionate about the Saints. I love going to the dome when it's on fire. Like, I love that. But as I get older and athletes kind of turn me off and sports kind of turns me off, I'm just kind of like, I don't know. But back to Breeze. So people kind of hold that against him, that he didn't win more. But then again, like Eli Manning won two Super Bowls and people want to blow Eli

Manning for winning those two Super Bowls. Although, if you look at Eli Manning overall, in his career. You look at the body of work, and he can't smell Drew Breezy shit. I mean, he's not even close. He's not even close to the player he was. He was a 500-type football player. He got a couple of lucky breaks in the Super Bowl, so he won two of them. And you don't take him away from him.

But, like, you know, people want to blow one guy because he played in New York and had a couple of miracle Super Bowl wins. And Drew gets punished because they didn't win enough. They didn't win as many as they should have. And look, I don't know that I'd even say the Saints should have one more. Because how many of those years that they lost in the playoffs were they like the best team either in the NFC or in the NFL? And rarely was that the case. I mean, they were very good.

And if some things would have gone their way, they could have gotten in. But I don't hold any of that shit against Drew because Drew is a legend and Drew is the man. And like, I don't think it's something you can fully understand unless you lived it, right? unless you were in New Orleans, in Louisiana, in that era, in the post-Katrina era, it's something that is so unique. And I don't think it will ever happen again in sports because it can't. Like, I mean, there are places that have been impacted by disaster. And they have had moments or tragedies and moments that have lasted a certain amount of time. Like 9-11 happens in New York.

Yankees go to the World Series that same year. And you hit the home runs off at Kim and the games early. the series and it's in New York and it's Mr. October, Mr. November, and there's all that. And like, there are moments. You know, there are people that go through disasters or go through tragedies or go through storm. We saw it in Houston. You know, we lived out with the hurricane there and the flooding there. And the Astros continue playing baseball.

The Astros go on to the World Series. The Astros go on to win the World Series. And you had Hurricane Harvey. And like, there are moments. You have those moments in time where that happens, right? But nothing like what happened in New Orleans. And that's not to diminish anything. Like I remember when I was first in Houston and somebody called up and talked about, I think it was hurricane, whatever the hurricane was that in that same kind of time frame had hit Houston really hard.

And people were like, it was really bad here. And I basically mocked them. I'm like, really bad here. You didn't live in New Orleans. Like just, you know, asshole thing to say. but, you know, because I didn't live it, so I didn't experience it. But, like, if you didn't live it, you truly didn't know. Granted, I didn't live in New Orleans, right?

So living in New Orleans is different than living in Baton Rouge. It's almost night and day in terms of the types of places they are. I mean, they're both pretty dangerous, but in crime-riddled. But there are two totally different places. One is, like, culture and music and blues and strip clubs and jazz and all this shit. Then one of them is just Ban Rouge. There's nothing super special about Baton Rouge. I love it, but there's just nothing super special about it.

But when Drew got to the Saints, it was after the 2005 season. And the 2005 season, the Saints were a nomadic traveling team that had to play home games in Baton Rouge at Tiger Stadium. They played games, I want to say, in San Antonio. They played games at home game. It was played in New York. You know that story. I mean, they were a traveling team. They were awful.

I think they went three and 13 that year. They fired Jim Hazlitt. They hire Sean Payton. And you look at a guy and see what he did to change the fortunes of a franchise. And you can circle that guy's addition. And you go, that changed everything. Drew Breeze is one of those guys. Because the Saints historically were a throwaway franchise that had never done anything.

They had one playoff win ever. And that was in 2000. And they're what? They're 30-somethingth year of existence. they finally want a playoff game. I mean, like, we had nothing there. Like, this was a bad team. And at the time, they were super terrible.

And there was a possibility they could leave. At least that was the thought. There was the fear that they could leave and go to San Antonio or somewhere else. And there were a lot of people in Baton Rouge that were like, I don't give a fuck, leave. Like, you think about the vibe in New Orleans now. And you think about how the Saints have this big fan base and the Hootat Nation and the games are all sold out. And they always had passionate fans. but it didn't really become a statewide phenomenon until Peyton, Breeze, post-Katrina, 2006, Steve Gleason-Block putt on Monday Night Football, gets everything going against the Falcons.

And then it was a snowball, it was an avalanche. And I was running the board at the time. I was back in Baton Rouge, and I was the local board op on the Saints Radio Network. So they'd, you know, pipe in the feed to Baton Rouge. I'd get there early in the morning. I'd have to run the pregame show. the game, the post-game show, the Cajun Cannon, Bobby A Bear Live from Dini's Seafood and Buckdown. If you ain't in Buckdown, you ain't at the real Dienies, baby, all that.

And I would just listen to it for hours. And I loved that team because you had Reggie. They drafted Reggie. They got Drew. You had this team with this coach, and they played this bad schedule, so they were able to win some games. But then they would win games against teams. You'd go, hey, how did they win that? And they get to the playoffs.

And they win a playoff game that year. and they get to the NFC championship game. Like, you can't fathom how special that was. Like, it is hard to get a grasp of how special that was. And it's almost incomparable. Because, again, there have been franchises that have had dramatic things happen, bad things happen, tragedies happen. And they've had runs coming off of those tragedies.

But this entire city was wiped out. It was underwater. It was dead. And people were talking about moving the team. And would New Orleans ever rebuild? could it ever function again? And here come the Saints. Saints go marching.

You get that U-2 song, the Saints song from U-2. Then you get the Green Day song. The Saints are fucking common and it's such a good song and it's awesome. And like, God, like everything about it was so good. Like, I don't know, man. It's just it's, it was a magical time. It really was. But then it could have just been a one-off.

You know, it's 2006. They make a nice run. They lose to the Bears in the NFC championship game. The people bring the signs that say finishing what Katrina started in Chicago and all this shit. And then the next year they don't make it. I think they missed the playoffs the next two years. And it could have just been like a one-off thing. It was nice.

It was cute. It was fine. But then they really start the real true golden era of the Saints in 2009, 2010. And they go on a nice run there, win the Super Bowl and all that. What does all this matter? I'm not trying to give you a history lesson on the Saints. But I do want to tell you why Drew Brees matters so much and why his situation is possibly more unique than anyone. Like obviously, Tom Brady went to the Patriots and got to play because Drew Bledsoe got hurt and he teams up with Belichick and they win six Super Bowls or whatever.

Obviously, guys like that are huge for the franchise. I'm not trying to say that Drew Brees is a better player than Tom Brady or a more accomplished player than a Tom Brady or somebody like that. or what Peyton Manning meant to Indianapolis or whatever. But given everything that New Orleans went through, and they needed a fucking hero, we needed a fucking hero. And I'm young, impressionable, 19-year-old Josh Ennis, part-time radio guy in Baton Rouge. And I sit there every Sunday listening to the Saints games. And I'm like, these people, these Saints players and Drew Breeze, most importantly, brought hope to people. and that was a special thing to be a part of.