The Denver Broncos got so desperate last January that two of their offensive coaches tried to talk a 47-year-old Hall of Famer out of retirement. They did it without telling the head coach.
Adam Schefter reported the story late Sunday, and it is one of the wildest what-ifs in recent NFL history.
Here is the setup. Bo Nix broke his ankle in Denver’s Jan. 17 divisional round win over the Buffalo Bills. Drew Brees had turned 47 two days earlier. With a trip to the Super Bowl on the line and no healthy franchise quarterback, then-offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi and offensive assistant Pete Carmichael reached out to Brees early in the week before the AFC Championship Game.
Both men had deep history with him. Lombardi spent two five-year stints as Brees’ quarterbacks coach in New Orleans. Carmichael was the Saints’ longtime offensive coordinator.
Brees did not laugh them off. He actually tested his body first, found discomfort in his wrist, and, per Schefter, nixed the idea.
Sean Payton had no clue
The best part of this story is that the head coach found out months later.
Neither Lombardi nor Carmichael told Sean Payton, the man who coached Brees for 15 years in New Orleans. Payton did not learn about the outreach until the offseason. Schefter describes his reaction as “fascinated and flabbergasted.”
Both of those words are doing real work. Two assistants went behind their head coach’s back to recruit that head coach’s most famous former player. In the middle of a conference championship week.
Instead, Jarrett Stidham started. He threw one touchdown and one interception in a three-point loss to the Patriots.
The Hall of Fame wrinkle
Brees was a first-ballot Pro Football Hall of Fame selection in the 2026 class. Schefter notes it is unclear whether playing a single game would have restarted his eligibility clock.
There is no clean precedent for a Hall of Famer un-retiring immediately after enshrinement. The league would have been writing the rule in real time, during the week of a conference championship, for a quarterback who had not taken an NFL snap since 2020.
This also was not the first time someone floated a Brees comeback. Payton himself spearheaded a push in 2021 to bring Brees back after Jameis Winston tore his ACL. Brees declined then too. He had also mentioned recent comeback conversations with NFL teams on the New Heights podcast, which now reads very differently.
Why it lands so hard right now
Denver just got demolished 31-10 in Kansas City on Monday night. Nix went 17-of-28 for 131 yards with a touchdown and an interception, and afterward called the offense’s performance “pretty pitiful.”
So the timeline goes like this. Nix breaks his ankle, the staff quietly tries to replace him with a 47-year-old retiree, Denver loses the conference title game anyway, and eight months later Nix opens the season with 131 passing yards.
Broncos fans are allowed to wonder what a healthy Drew Brees would have looked like in that game. They are also allowed to wonder what the coaching staff actually thinks of their quarterback.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.