The New Orleans Saints made it a priority to re-sign Drew Brees this offseason and the veteran quarterback chose to take a team-friendly deal. After retaining him for next season, New Orleans GM Mickey Loomis is ‘appreciative' of Brees' contract:
“We needed to know what Drew was going to count on our (salary) cap this year, what resources are we using because then that gives us the ability to do some other things,” Loomis told the Saints’ website. “To Drew's credit, his No. 1 goal was to make sure we had an opportunity to improve our roster, keep our roster together and be as competitive as we can be. I'm certainly appreciative of how he's handled that contract the last couple times because again the most important thing to him is we have a competitive team.”
Whenever a team needs to sign a quarterback, it's expected that it will take an arm and a leg to get a deal done. However, with Brees, he decided to take less money in hopes it could help the team improve the roster around him.
Rather than accepting $30 million or more annually, Brees ended up signing a two-year, $50 million deal. Also, the deal gave Brees a $23 million signing bonus while he has just a $2 million base salary in 2020.
As a result of Brees commanding less money, New Orleans was able to sign Emmanuel Sanders and re-sign Andrus Peat. On the other hand, the Saints were able to reunite with Malcolm Jenkins on defense.
Brees, who turned 41 years old in January, understands that his window to win another Super Bowl is closing. Given that, it made sense for him to take a deal that gave the Saints a better chance of building a contending team in 2020.
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