The Josh Innes Show - NFL Hall Of Fame Nominations

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

Back to our discussion from yesterday, what makes someone a surefire Hall Of Famer? Why is Drew Brees a lock but guys like Russell Wilson aren't? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. speaking of Drew Brees. Drew Brees is one of the first-time finalists for the Hall of Fame.

So we have the list of those Hall of Famers, other than this potential Hall of Famers. And let's see, we've got the, let's see, we've got nominees here for the first time. Man, it makes me feel sad that we're at this point in life now where Drew Brees is, you know, on the Hall of Fame nomination list, which means that we're like six years removed. from the last time the Saints were good

and it makes me really sad. Like before you know it, it will be like a decade removed from the Saints being good at football and I'm depressed when I think about it. But let's play a couple commercials and let's get into this. Hit pause on whatever you're listening to

and hit play on your next adventure. This fall get double points on every qualified stay. Life's the trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and condition. First off, as it relates to Drew Breeze, though, so Drew Breeze is considered a lock for the Hall of Fame. And he should be. If you look at what Drew Breeze has done in his career, mostly with the Saints, of course.

Drew Breeze has been a rock star. It's also hard to believe that Drew Breeze was the quarterback for San Diego for like six years. You know, people forget about this. He was actually four years or five years. Four full seasons, Drew Breeze was the quarterback for the Chargers. That's wild to think about that, considering that no one even thinks about it. that. People think about all the years he played with the Sains. And if you look at his numbers, I mean, he's going to be a Hall of Famer. Should have been an MVP at some point in there. He's

been the offensive player of the year a couple of times, you know, an MVP runner up a couple of times. Like Drew Brees is an all-time great player, and he is going to be there. He's won one Super Bowl. He's going to be there. 172 wins. He's going to be there, right? But back to our discussion about Russell Wilson yesterday? So Russell Wilson, what did we say yesterday, was 11th all-time in wins? And the way things have gone for Russell Wilson in the last couple of years, it's really hurt his legacy overall. He's just been a lesser player than he was when he was in Seattle. And no one would ever accuse Russell Wilson of being Drew Breeze. But Drew Breeze gobbled up a lot of statistics and people don't want to talk about this.

New Orleans people don't want to talk about this because we love Drew Breeze and Drew Breeze is an all-time great player. And no one will ever take that away from Drew Breeze, the all-time great player. But Drew Breeze put up a lot of yards on a lot of bad teams, right? Like that last stretch of teams, the last four years or so he was in the league, those were really good teams that had really good defenses. A lot of years, like there was that stretch in what, what year was it, 13, 14, 15, or 14, 15, 16, where the Saints had all-time bad defenses. Was it Rob Ryan was the defensive coordinator?

And their defenses were epically bad. Like, for instance, they had a game against Eli Manning and the Giants where they won an overtime and both teams scored 50 points. Like, they could not stop anybody. And Drew put up a lot of statistics on a lot of teams that were forced to throw because their defenses were historically bad in some stretches. So, you look at statistics, everybody's got numbers like that. But I think when you start just looking at straight up numbers, you start looking up at compiled

stats, you go, well, how many of those were meaningful yards that were thrown for? Again, Drew Breeze is a Hall of Famer. I'm not arguing that Drew Breeze isn't a Hall of Famer. What I am arguing, though, is you look at a guy like Russell. Wilson and we talk about Russell Wilson like his Hall of Fame status is up in the air guys won a Super Bowl guy was a nine-time pro bowler guy won more than 10 games like 10 times and we look at him and we just prop him up because his defense is good or we say like they say people prop up Russell Wilson because Russell Wilson's defense was good people hated Russell

Wilson I think it's because he's a light skin goofy dude and he wrote a defense that was really good and he became easy to make fun of. He was a goofy dude. He's just like a nerd, and people like to shit on the dude. These are things I've read. These are, by the way, not my opinion of Russell Wilson. This is shit you read on the internet about Russell Wilson. People hate him for these reasons.

But all the dude did when he was in Seattle is went 104 games and lose 53 of them and went to the Pro Bowl nine times. Like, the guy is a solid player and he should be. Like the fact that Russell Wilson's not a lock for the Hall of Fame, but Drew Breeze is. Yes, Drew Breeze is an all-time great player. And Drew Breeze should be in the Hall of Fame. But Drew Brees put up a lot of numbers on some bad teams. Like you forget, like, while he was in New Orleans, they had a lot of seasons where they weren't particularly good.

They had bad defense. What, they had that stretch where they made the playoffs. They went to the Super Bowl in like 9, 10, 11, 12, I guess that stretch of teams was good. Then they had the 14, 15, 16, which was just abysmal. Then they went to the playoffs again four consecutive years after that. but Drew Breeze did put up a lot of stats on teams that weren't very good and you're trying to rally a lot of the time.

Again, I'm not trying to sell you on Drew Breeze not being a Hall of Famer. He is a clear Hall of Famer. But we look at guys like Eli Manning and Drew Breeze and we're like, Locke's. And then we're like Russell Wilson, I don't know. Like there's big debates about whether or not Russell Wilson's a hall of favor. That is stupid.

First of all, he's still one of the most famous quarterbacks to ever play the position. That's a fact. He's still a guy that's been to two super. Bowls won one of them, and if they don't throw the ball on the goal line, which is still arguably the most inexplicable play in history, they have two Super Bowls and it would be a no-douder. And as we talked about yesterday, look at Eli Manning. If Eli Manning doesn't have two miracle catches and his name isn't Manning and he doesn't play in New York, if his name was Eli Abramowitz and he was playing quarterback in Jacksonville, and he doesn't have two miracle

catches, are his statistics good enough to be in the Super Bowl, the Hall of Fame? And the answers? Obviously, no. But all of those things did happen. So we prop Eli Manning up. And then we somehow denigrate and demean Russell Wilson because, oh, he played with a good defense. And he got too much credit for what that defense was doing. He still had to make the throws. There's still a damn good player. So just like the argument that, oh, I don't know, we got to see on Russell Wilson. But we don't have to see on Eli Manning. As we talked about Their win totals are very similar. Their statistics, if I had to guess, I would assume that Eli threw for probably a lot more yards.

Obviously, Drew Breeze threw for a lot more yards. Again, not arguing that Drew Breeze isn't a Hall of Famer because he is. But we just write off Russell Wilson like he sucked. Because of how bad things have gone, we like to go rewrite history because all these Legion of Boom guys seemingly don't like Russell Wilson and feel like they didn't get enough credit because of Russell Wilson. We sit there and downplay Russell Wilson. Larry Fitzgerald's also on the Hall of Fame ballot. You forget that he retired at the same time Drew did.

Larry Fitzgerald, just a steady dude, man. Other nominees in their first year of eligibility are quarterback's Philip Rivers. I think the Philip Rivers thing is overrated too. Alex Smith. Alex Smith ain't going to be in the Hall of Fame. Greg Olson, Jason Whitten, Frank Gore, Le Shaw McCoy is also not a Hall of Fame. You can be on the ballot all you want. When we start putting LaShawn McCoy's and people like that and there, like a very good player.

LaShawn McCoy should not be a Hall of Famer. Greg Olson probably isn't a Hall of Fame. That's my first thought. For whatever reason, and this could be like a Dallas bias thing, my first thought is that Greg Olson isn't a Hall of Famer and Jason Witten is. But again, that's just first thought, not looking at the numbers, not looking at postseason success, not looking at a lot of those other factors, just off the time. top of my head. If you say, Josh, Hall of Famer, Greg Olson, my first thought is no. Jason Whitten, yes. But I bet if we looked at the numbers, they'd be pretty similar. So, I don't know.

But Drew Breeze and Larry Fitzgerald are obviously going to the Hall of Fame. And look, I love Drew Brees. Drew Brees brought me so much joy. And I loved watching the guy play who didn't in New Orleans. Like, you look at what we have now. We got Spencer Rattler and these guys getting 50-something hung on them on a daily basis. They're terrible. And you look back on. what we had and you're like, wow, you sure miss it. There was a time. This is hysterical. So when me and Jim were doing this New Orleans show initially, we had to do an extra show. So we were doing mornings on 790. And when they launched this sports station in New Orleans on this 1280, which is now black information network, sports did not work out well there.

But they had us do like a two-hour midday show, like 10 a.m. to noon or noon to two or something like that. I forgot when it aired. And we had to record this because I wasn't going to sit around and do the damn thing live. So I would go in and repurpose some of the stuff we did on the morning show and then add some unique segments to it and then drop it in. And there was one time that me and Jim were driving around listening to it because I wanted to see how it sounded, you know, see if it sounded good. So we turned on the iHeart app and we're listening to this New Orleans show we did. And I hear us forget to edit out the downtime in between segments, like where he and I have. just bullshitting, and I'm like, here's what we're going to talk.

Jim, let's do this. I'm like, damn it, I three, two, one go. And I'm like, shit. No one noticed because no one ever listened to the radio station. But before they moved us to just simulcasting our morning show there, we did this little two-hour thing. And we started that right around the time the Saints started O. And I'm going off about how it's time for Sean Payton to go, and I'm going off about

how it's time for Drew Brees to go. you're saying all the hot take shit. You know, you're like Drew's done. Drew's finished. Sean Payton's got to go. Let's get something new. Let's restart this thing. They would then go on after that 0-and-2 start to go to the playoffs.

And I believe that was the year they lost the Minnesota Miracle. Then the next year, I believe, was the year that they lost in the AAANFC championship game. And then the next year they lost to the Vikings again in the playoffs. And then the next year was the year that they lost to Tampa in the playoff. playoffs and they have not been back since but they went to the playoffs four straight years I believe they won the division four straight years and they had some pretty epic times but it's just funny like what an ass hat I was on this station fortunately nobody listened to it because it was a throwaway and nobody knew and existed and now it's the black information network but at the time it was like cool

I'm on in New Orleans let's rock you know and I'm doing this show and no one's reacting to it because nobody knows it exists but I'm saying shit like Drew Breeze has to go and he only went on to have four seasons after that where I would imagine he was in the MVP race in at least one of those. Yep, 2018. Drew finished number two in offensive player of the year and number two in the MVP race

in 2018. And the year before, I'm like, this 38-year-old putts, he's dunzo. And all the Saints went on to do in those years was, hey, they went 11 and 5 and 13 and 2, should have gone to another Super Bowl. They were robbed of a Super Bowl. It's just funny how that all works

out. By the way, Drew Breeze threw for 80,000 years. One of the worst things ever is that Drew Breeze's career ended during COVID. And COVID, we will look back on this. We're already looking back on this for the scam and the absurdity of COVID. But the fact that Drew Breeze's career ended, losing a home playoff game to Tampa in front of nobody in the Superdome will go down as one of the great, terrible ways for someone to end their career.

An absolute legend, a dude who's the greatest player in the history of the New Orleans Saints, ended his career in the COVID year with nobody in the Superdome. A playoff game with an empty Superdome losing because Jared fucking Cook dropped a pass that was intercepted. Tampa goes on to win the game. Tom Brady goes on to win the fucking Super Bowl. And like, I'm not going to say that that one should have been a Saints Super Bowl that year, although that team was good and it could have should have been a St.

Super Bowl in 2020. The 2018 one is the one that was stolen. The 2018 was the one that, at worst, it should have been another Super Bowl. appearance. But it wasn't because the refs stole it and that's fine. But you look back on 2020. 41 year old Drew Brees barely hanging on. He's in the playoffs. He can't get the ball down the field. And he ends his fucking career in an empty Superdome losing a playoff game during the goddamn Rona. It's an outrage, really. It is disgusting. When you think of the worst possible ways for a legend to end his career, like you'll hear about like, oh, Mickey Mays

folly or Mickey Mantle fall or sorry I combined two people but like Willie May is falling down in center field for the Mets you know you start thinking about horrible ways that people in their careers right with guys barely hanging on and playing like shit Drew is still playing at a decent enough level for them to win games and he had to end his career in an empty stadium because of these fucking politicians and the goddamn Rona it is an it is really an unforgivable sin is what it is Anyway, more to come.