What-If Wednesday: Drew Brees Joins the Miami Dolphins
January 2010
Confetti falls to the turf as a new champion out of the Southeast is crowned football’s champion. Nick Saban hoists the hardware in a moment emblematic of the first major step toward solidifying perhaps the greatest legacy in the game’s history.
Only, Saban isn’t celebrating the culmination of a successful return to college football. He holds not the crystal ball reflective of the Bowl Championship Series, but rather the Lombardi Trophy. Further, it’s the Miami Dolphins defeating the Minnesota Vikings in the Super Bowl — not the Alabama Crimson Tide beating Texas at the Rose Bowl — to claim a long-awaited addition to their history.
It seems far-fetched given how underwhelmingly Saban’s abbreviated NFL tenure unfolded. He left the Dolphins organization less than three years after leading LSU to a BCS championship and with an overall record of 15-17. But had Miami landed its most coveted target of the 2006 offseason, perhaps the landscape of football today is dramatically different.
March 2006
It’s about three months after the conclusion of the 2005 NFL season, Saban’s first heading up the Dolphins. Miami missed the Playoffs, as it had for the four seasons prior, but a 9-7 finish marked a considerable turnaround from the previous campaign’s 4-12 record.
Hindsight tells us otherwise, but there was reason for optimism coming out of Saban’s debut season. Ronnie Brown almost rushed for 1,000 yards as a rookie, splitting carries with Ricky Williams; Chris Chambers was electric, earning Pro Bowl designation for his 82-catch, 1,118-yard performance; Randy McMichael was establishing himself as one of the more dangerous red-zone targets at tight end; and the front seven paired two bonafide studs in Zach Thomas and Jason Taylor with young Channing Crowder, coming off a 100-tackle finish to his second pro season.
The missing ingredient, meanwhile, was close to joining the mix.
The Dolphins needed a quarterback, and indicators pointed to one of either Drew Brees or Daunte Culpepper. Both wowed fans in the preceding years, but were gambles as acquisitions due to injury history. For a team like Miami with pieces to win immediately, however, the gamble was worthwhile taking.
Miami finished 2005 on the right side of .500 with quarterback play that could be generously deemed middling. Gus Frerote 52 percent of his nearly 500 pass attempts for fewer than 3,000 yards and had 13 interceptions against just 18 touchdowns. Dan Marino’s shadow continued to loom large over south Florida, with none of the successors in the years following his retirement coming anywhere close to the legend’s production.
With that in mind, it’s fascinating to view the many records of Marino’s that Drew Brees surpassed in his time as a New Orleans Saint, knowing that Miami was initially the lead suitor for Brees in 2006.
It also makes a take such as the below from the Palm Beach Post all the more gobsmacking.
Sheesh.
But, in Greg Stoda’s defense, his was a reasonable position at the time. Let’s rewind further.
Spring 2004
NFL analysts love to cite Drew Brees when evaluating undersized quarterbacks prospects, regardless if the comparison actually fits. That’s because, before Brees’ star turn, there really weren’t successful pro quarterbacks around 6-feet1 since Fran Tarkenton.
And while Brees flourished in college, producing numbers foreshadowing the evolution of passing offenses in the 21st Century while leading Purdue to a Rose Bowl, skeptics viewed Joe Tiller’s offense as a gimmick that wouldn’t fly on Sundays.
Thus, the San Diego Chargers took a bit of a risk drafting Brees with the first pick of the second round in the 2001 draft.
Brees showed some flashes of the Heisman-contending game from Purdue by his second season, but a dismal 2003 campaign in which he threw for 15 interceptions against 11 touchdowns and completed fewer than 60 percent of his attempts left the Chargers right back at the top of the draft.
It was understood throughout the 2003 football season that Ole Miss product Eli Manning was going No. 1, no matter what team had the top pick. But in the months between San Diego slotting into the first pick and draft day, Arch Manning made no bones about the family’s resistance to Eli suiting up for the Chargers.
Still, the Chargers had leverage with that top pick, plus a desire to take a quarterback as a hedge on their Brees bet. Manning’s selection resulted in a trade that brought NC State’s Philip Rivers to Southern California.
Maybe it’s just my own myopia or an indication of me getting old, but I don’t feel like folks appreciate how damn good Rivers was at North Carolina State. Even at the time, though, he was clearly worthy of being a Heisman finalist yet received no invite to NYC.
San Diego came away with a high-potential prospect, and a quarterback of the more traditional mold than that of Brees.
Getting Rivers up to NFL speed wasn’t going to take long, thus playing him became a matter of when — albeit a matter complicated when Brees broke out as a legit playmaker in the 2004 season.
I moved to the San Diego area shortly after Brees left the Chargers organization. It’s been a half-decade since the franchise moved north and a huge portion of the fan base stopped paying attention, and it’s been more than 16 years since Brees last suited up for San Diego. And I can say that unequivocally, San Diegans speak with more wistful reverence of Brees than they do the Chargers.
And that’s after one excellent season and one good season at the end of his abbreviated run with the team!
But it’s deserved; Brees was that good in 2004.
The question of what to do with two high-ceiling quarterbacks resolved itself, however, when Brees reached free agency coming off a shoulder injury at the end of the 2005 campaign.
The 2006 Season
The above-referenced Palm Beach Post column advocating against Miami’s pursuit of Brees could be defended in the spring of 2006. By about Halloween, however, the premise was thoroughly disproven.
By that juncture in the campaign, Culpepper — whom Miami went with after Brees signed to New Orleans on March 14 — was already done as a Dolphin. He started just four games, going 81-for-134 with two touchdowns and three picks.
Coincidentally, it was a shoulder injury that sent Culpepper to the IR, not the knee injury from the previous season. That left Joey Harrington to quarterback the Dolphins for the remainder of a 6-10 season.
New Orleans finished the inverse, meanwhile, landing a playoff berth that turned into a trip to the NFC Championship Game. Brees passed for an NFL-best 4,418 yards in 2006, a benchmark he’d easily surpass in nine of the next 10 seasons.
Determining Miami’s fortunes had it signed Brees is not so simple as to move the Saints’ records over and call it a wrap. The franchises play in different divisions of different conferences, with the Dolphins guaranteed to face legendary coach (and Saban mentor) Bill Belichick twice a season.
However, Brees making plays and Miami showing promise in 2006 may have made staying more attractive for Saban — and retaining Saban a greater priority for Dolphins brass.
As Brees became the face of an organization lauded for lifting a community devastated by Hurricane Katrina just a year earlier, Saban became a target for derision in Miami. But as much frustration as Dolphins fans felt, it was likely exponentially less than the collective malaise within the Alabama fan base.
The Crimson Tide finished a 10-2 2005 season under Mike Shula that frankly felt a bit smoke-and-mirrors. Alabama drilled No. 5-ranked Florida early in the campaign, though the Gators were wildly overrated heading into that season.
Other wins over Southern Miss and dreadful Ole Miss and Mississippi State teams by a combined 20 points bare the reality of the Tide’s 10 wins. By 2006, the facade fell and Alabama limped to a 6-7 finish.
Shula was fired after the Thanksgiving weekend, but his dismissal felt like a foregone conclusion following a loss to Mississippi State. Chatter around who might lead Alabama next swirled online before there was even an opening.
The same week the position became vacant, West Virginia reached double-digit wins for a second consecutive season under Rich Rodriguez; the 10th victory sealed in what ranks among my favorite games of the 2000s.
The Mountaineers outlasted Cinderella Rutgers in triple overtime, 41-39, putting a fitting cap on the remarkable ‘06 Big East season.
One week later, West Virginia scored another major victory (at least, for the time being):
Rich Rod in the SEC
I feel like I could write an extensive What-If Wednesday just on the career of Rich Rodriguez: For example, what if he’d been retained at Michigan for the 2011 season, using Denard Robinson in a system better fit to the dynamic playmaker’s abilities? The Wolverines went to the Sugar Bowl that season under Brady Hoke, but perhaps could have been one game better to land a BCS Championship Game berth.
Or, what if Arizona administration had stood by Rodriguez in 2018 when a former administrative assistant filed a harassment lawsuit that resulted in Rich Rod’s firing? For those not aware, as the case didn’t make many headlines last October, the suit was dismissed in a ruling suggesting it lacked merit.
After a promising 2017 season and with Khalil Tate running Rodriguez’s offense, Arizona may well have been in the mix to win what was a lackluster Pac-12 — and to say nothing of the dire state in which Kevin Sumlin left the Wildcats after three disastrous seasons.
Of all the Rich Rod-related what-ifs, West Virginia winning the 2007 Backyard Brawl — and thus playing an Ohio State team that I feel confident Pat White would have run circles around — is not one of them.
John U. Bacon’s excellent book Three and Out on Rich Rod’s stint at Michigan explains in detail why Rodriguez wasn’t coming back to Morgantown. Three and Out also sheds light on how Rodriguez’s time with the Wolverines was doomed before it began, and perhaps he’d have faced the same challenges at Alabama.
Maybe, like at Michigan, there would have been resistance from a traditionalist fan base to an uptempo, option-based offense in the 2000s. Yes, Saban implemented spread elements in recent years, but after he’d had the cachet built from dominating the game for years with an old-school approach.
This was a time when SEC fans went online and crowed about how 13-10 games (or worse) were “real football,” and Will Muschamp became a proto-meme losing his mind amid a 3-0 grind.
There may well have been a cultural conflict akin to that which he faced at Michigan. After all, Paul Finebaum still rips Rodriguez to this day in what is college football’s most one-sided feud (aside from The Press Break vs. Moon Crew).
However, the SEC base of this era feels considerably more receptive than the same era’s Big Ten base when it comes to new ideas — so long as they produced results.
What’s more, a modernized offense proved it could work in the rough-and-tumble SEC of the day. Urban Meyer’s immediate success, winning a national champion in Year 2 at Florida, speaks to the possibilities.
Much like at Michigan, Rodriguez’s hypothetical Alabama tenure would have come down to the performance of the defense. The offense would work; it’s worked everywhere, and having the recruiting advantages inherent to Alabama, the Crimson Tide would have rolled at a staggering pace in the late 2000s.
But the matter of defensive coordinator looms large. Jeff Casteel’s resistance to following Rodriguez to Ann Arbor led to the hire of Greg Robinson, a move that sealed Rich Rod’s fate. Casteel’s scheme wouldn’t necessarily have been a saving grace in the Big Ten, however, as the 3-3-5 stack works most effectively against smaller, quicker offenses akin to Rodriguez’s.
Likewise, the massive offensive lines and power-run games reflective of SEC philosophies would have likely bulldozed the 3-3-5 look.
Then adding a bit of a Domino Effect when it comes to defensive coordinators, no Nick Saban in Alabama means no Kirby Smart with the Crimson Tide…and no move to Georgia a decade later.
Smart joined Saban’s Dolphins staff in 2006 as safeties coach, then followed the head coach to Tuscaloosa a year later.
New Rivalries
So what does Alabama do if, in the weeks after Rodriguez passed on the job, Saban had held firm to his promise, “I will not be the Alabama coach”?
Maybe Bobby Petrino, who accepted an offer from the Atlanta Falcons the same week Alabama hired Saban, lands with the rival of the program he had very public flirtations not long before2.
If nothing else, a hypothetical Petrino tenure at Alabama would have added enough poison to the Iron Bowl rivalry to make the late Harvey Updyke jealous.
But on the topic of rivalries: Imagine Tom Brady and Drew Brees sharing a division when both were at their peaks. Imagine Nick Saban and Bill Belichick battling for supremacy.
My goodness, I can already see the NFL Network A Football Life episode in my mind’s eye.
Obligatory mention that Brees’ listing of 6-foot is kayfabe — wrestling parlance for inflated.
Late in the 2003 season, Auburn brass attempted to arrange a meeting with then-Louisville coach Petrino. The episode, lamely nicknamed “JetGate,” was scandalous both because Auburn didn’t yet have a vacant position, and Petrino had previously coached alongside the man holding the job, Tommy Tuberville.