Drew Brees reportedly considered coming out of retirement to join Broncos in AFC title game last season
· Yahoo Sports
It looks like the Denver Broncos were this close to seeing their 2025 season take an eye-popping turn. On Monday, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that Hall of Fame quarterback Drew Brees had considered coming out of retirement to join the Broncos in the postseason last year.
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Per Schefter, Brees had conversations with the team’s then-offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi and offensive assistant Pete Carmichael about the quarterback potentially playing in the AFC championship. The Broncos had lost starting QB Bo Nix to a broken ankle in the final plays of the divisional win over the Buffalo Bills, leaving an opening at QB1 that was being filled by backup Jarrett Stidham.
The 47-year-old Brees said that he wanted to work out first to see how his body was doing, but “discomfort” in Brees’ wrist led him to turn down the offer, per Schefter.
Lombardi and Carmichael, along with Broncos head coach Sean Payton, all worked with Brees during his time with the New Orleans Saints. However, Payton only heard about the plot to entice Brees back to the NFL this offseason, with the plan leaving him “both fascinated and flabbergasted,” per Schefter
However, Denver maybe could have used Brees in the title game, as the team lost 10-7 to the New England Patiotrs; Stidham made crucial mistakes in the loss.
Brees’ unretirement would have mimicked that of Philip Rivers, who in December signed with the Indianapolis Colts out of nowhere to replace an injured Daniel Jones. Rivers exceeded expectations in two starts before promptly re-retiring, though he said he’d do it all again.
But Brees’ potential return would have been a much larger, and more baffling, deal than Rivers: The longtime Saints quarterback was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame this year in his first year of eligibility, having been retired for five seasons. It’s unclear how a return would have affected that eligibility for Brees, who was inducted into the Hall in August.
Even so, Brees had alluded to potentially unretiring on an episode of the Kelce brothers’ “New Heights” podcast in February, saying that he “had some conversations.” That episode aired just a few weeks after the AFC championship.
With his gold jacket on, the likelihood that Brees actually makes a return now feels incredibly slim — but, for a moment, imagine the parallel universe in which he did make his way back to the field.