This may be the last time I’ll ever wear a Chargers uniform. Fear rose up. Maybe this is the last time I’ll ever wear a football uniform. This could be the end of my career. The feeling was real. I could taste it. And it was terrifying.
Chargers Training Camp. Serra Mesa, California. August, 2006.
Training Camp has never been the ideal place to look backwards. It is a time for dreaming; the bigger, the better.
The fan I was talking to was beginning to understand from my body language that I did not share his optimism. So, I decided to make it plain.
"We're starting over at quarterback. We don't have any idea if Rivers is actually good. Our quarterback is in New Orleans. That doesn't bother you?"
"Yeah, too bad about that," he said.
"He'll never win anything down there."
Drew Brees didn't lose his job to Philip Rivers overnight. It actually took over two years. The origins of that decision go back to the 2004 Draft; one in which the Chargers held the top pick and could have taken any player they wanted, at any position they wanted.
We will never know what might have happened if Brees had stayed in San Diego. What if the team had selected receiver Larry Fitzgerald instead of Philip Rivers and paired another Hall of Famer with Tomlinson and Brees? How many championships did the 2004 draft sway? It is one of the great what ifs in NFL history.
Picking at the top of the first round was the exact same position the Chargers had been in three years prior; the year the team traded back to fifth with Atlanta to select Hall of Fame running back LaDainian Tomlinson.
If your team is picking at the top of the draft a few years removed from picking at the top of the draft, then your team is not very good.
San Diego made Brees the first pick of the second round of the 2001 NFL Draft after trading down and allowing the Atlanta to pick Michael Vick. As a rookie, Brees sat behind veteran Doug Flutie, appearing once in a game against Kansas City after Flutie suffered a concussion. Sparking a second half rally that came up short, Flutie was back in the starting lineup the next game, but the writing was on the wall.
The arrival of new head coach Marty Schottenheimer coincided with Brees earning the starting job going into the 2002 season. Even though Schottenheimer built the offense around Tomlinson, Brees still managed to complete 61% of his throws for 3,284 yards and threw 17 touchdowns. A promising 6-1 start was followed by a 6-19 stretch that culminated in the disastrous 2003 season; another last place finish, another high draft pick, and another chance to start over.
A new general manager had taken over after the John Butler lost his battle with lung cancer in April, 2003.
In March, Butler had shown up late to a news conference announcing the free agent signing of receiver David Boston. He came straight from a chemotherapy session and if you remember anything about the Boston signing, you know that the chemotherapy was a better investment.
The 2003 Chargers cut ties to tenured star players Junior Seau and Rodney Harrison in the off-season and cratered when new GM A.J. Smith whiffed on his first draft class and watched as
Boston proved to be more interested in BMI than going over the middle. No one so massive has ever played smaller.
San Diego needed proof of concept, and needed it fast. Schottenheimer's best days seemed behind him. Smith's first draft was ignominious. By trying to force passes to Boston, Brees had regressed and was benched for a stretch in the hopes that Flutie could provide a spark. Seau was now in Miami. Harrison wound up playing a key role for a Super Bowl champion in New England.
This backdrop was the nadir that led the Manning family to use their leverage to keep Eli from being selected number one overall by the Chargers. It wasn't strong-arming as much as it was browbeating, both the organization and the city of San Diego.
The Chargers didn't bluff.
Historians will say that Eli Manning won two Super Bowls, but A.J. Smith won the draft day trade after he selected Eli Manning with the first pick, then dealt him to the New York Giants for Philip Rivers, plus picks that he would turn into outside linebacker Shawne Merriman and kicker Nate Kaeding.
A contract dispute led to Rivers missing the start of training camp. Ever the egalitarian, Schottenheimer gave the job back to the player more equipped to help him win now. Behind the scenes, Smith was probably irritated that Rivers sat, but Brees' play on the field forced the GM to bite his tongue.
With Boston gone, Brees started whistling passes to his favorite receiver: the open one. Leading San Diego to a 12-4 record and its first AFC West title in a decade, Brees threw for 3,159 yards with 27 touchdowns, seven interceptions, and wound up in the Pro Bowl. His yards per attempt increased by 2 yards from 5.9 to 7.9. He built chemistry with unheralded receivers like Eric Parker, Reche Caldwell, Kasim Osgood, and Tim Dwight.
And though a midseason trade netted veteran Keenan McCardell, the player Brees targeted the most was an undrafted tight end who had not played a snap of college football. A 6'-4" basketball player from Kent State named Antonio Gates caught 81 passes for 964 yards and 13 touchdowns. (Rest assured, I will be writing more about him later.)
Brees was voted Comeback Player of the Year by the Associated Press. Rivers was wondering if he should ask for a trade.
Had A.J. Smith seen enough to reward Brees with a second contract? A pay raise consistent with the league leaders, of which he now was? Not quite.
Though Brees had already proved it, Smith decided to make the leader of his football team prove it again.
Franchise quarterbacks under 30 don't reach free agency unless something freakish happens—on the field, or off.
Which is exactly what happened on New Year's Eve 2005.
Eliminated from the playoffs, the Chargers season finale was played strictly for pride. You could argue that pride was also behind Coach Schottenheimer's decision to play Brees when the GM was pushing him to let Rivers get on the field. By this point Schottenheimer and Smith rarely talked, communicating primarily through proxies.
The GM could select the players and make recommendations, but the coach made the decisions regarding playing time. (This organizational power struggle would reach a breaking point a year later.)
Schottenheimer played his starting quarterback, which in a strange twist of multiple fates, unintentionally led to his exit from the Chargers.
In the second quarter Brees was sacked by Broncos safety John Lynch. The blindside hit caused him to fumble on the shadow of his own goal line.
Though the game had no stakes, Brees dove face-first into a scrum to try to recover the ball. Defensive tackle Gerard Warren (6'-4", 325lb), who was also trying to find the ball, crushed Brees' exposed throwing arm with the force of a fullback knocking over a pylon.
Brees wrote about it in his book, Coming Back Stronger.
The force of Warren’s hit, and then the others who piled on, twisted my arm in a direction it is not supposed to go. The collision was ferocious, and it happened in a matter of milliseconds. And then there was silence—a stunned silence for me. The only way I can describe it is that the entire stadium became still. It wasn’t just pain in my arm and shoulder—there was a signal that went to every part of my body telling me something was off. Way off.
The injury? A dislocated shoulder, a 360-degree tear of the labrum and a torn rotator cuff. If there was tissue holding his shoulder together, then it was now pulled pork.
The Chargers told him not to worry, and to tackle the surgery first. Then Smith offered him a backup quarterback's contract. Prove it to me again kid.
A.J. Smith had run the clock out on him.
The Dolphins, under new head coach Nick Saban, wanted to sign Brees but couldn't get their medical team to sign off on that surgically-repaired shoulder. The only other team interested in him wasn't sure that they would have their building ready to play games in.
A devastating tropical cyclone and subsequent levee break responsible for 1,392 fatalities and $125 billion in estimated damages had left New Orleans partially underwater in August, 2005.
So, in one of the great synergistic marriages in sports history, a quarterback whose career was in tatters decided that he would author his resurrection in a city at the same impasse.
In hindsight the Chargers were always going to let Brees leave via free agency and give the job to Rivers in 2006. The fact is that A.J. Smith had an entire season of tape, more really, for which to offer Brees an extension, but he did not. Smith kicked the can down the road knowing that in the off-chance that Brees suffered an injury he could get the parachute he needed.
Smith's enormous ego was tethered to his 2004 draft day coup—primarily in a young kid from Alabama with a funky release; brimming with confidence, but dying a little bit inside with every game he had to watch when he felt like he should be playing.
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It really hurt to watch Brees go one year, blamed for how the whole team played with a bad offensive line, to the next seasons where he proved himself, only to have that awful injury. After he left I was a true fan of his on and off the field.
AJ Smith, not at all. An ego never kept in check, riding from a few choice picks, and the real reason Schottenheimer left.
Although Rivers was a true blessing, what a talent and a spirited player never matched.
Man oh man that hurt for us and for Brees but his revenge was sweet.
Great as always