Memo to Drew Brees: It's Time for What Is and What Should Be

Made up my mind, make a new start
Goin' to California with an achin' in my heart
Someone told me there's a girl out there
With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair

Haven't seen too many this time...

You were always a student of the game—even back in Austin, at Westlake High, and at Purdue, where you set some gaudy Big Ten Records in ol' Joe Tiller's pass-happy offense.

Ol' Joe said you would sometimes be in the offices watching film at 10 or 11 at night, making the coaches stick around until you felt they were ready to leave.

But you were young with all the ambition of youth, and you were a young man on a mission.

Ol' Joe was one of the few college coaches to recruit you. Tilller said he needed a guy behind center who could manage the game on his own. Joe saw something in you that day in your first start as a sophomore.

"It was against USC in the Pigskin Classic in the Coliseum, and I can remember one throw from the 12-yard line," crowed Ol' Joe to the local beat writer. "It was third or fourth down, I know we needed a score. They blitzed him, and he stepped sideways, skipped off to his left and almost side-armed the ball coming off his right side to the tight end.

"I can still remember to this day saying into the headset, 'Boys, I think we got ourselves a quarterback."

You led Purdue to the Rose Bowl as a senior and departed as the Big Ten's all-time leader in just about every damned category there was, and then it was Going to California for you, where things would be so much different.

San Diego drafted you in the second round and asked you to play a damned conservative brand of offense called "Marty Ball."

"What the f**K is Marty Ball?" you thought to yourself, but you eventually thrived in that obsolete offense and learned a few things from Schottenheimer and Norv Turner and Cam Cameron.

You're an optimist at heart, and you found the silver lining in that offense. You said the offense helped you get better at reading fronts, doing run checks at the line. You said it took your game to another level.

After you struggled in 2003, that jackass A.J. Smith went quarterback shopping, drafting some cocky kid out of N.C. State named Philip Rivers, and you knew your days in Cali were numbered.

Rivers was a preseason holdout, and you weren't going to give up without a fight; sure enough, you had a breakoout season in 2004, leading San Diego to a 12-4 record and an AFC West title.

You were solid again in 2005, but the team fell to 8-8 and you tore your rotator cuff in the final game of the season, giving that jackass A.J. the excuse he needed to let you go.

You said when they drafted Rivers that you needed to make up your mind at that point if you were going to be a career backup or "am I going to be a guy who people look at with a lot of respect and could be considered one of the best in the league."

You were never shy about saying that you were disappointed about how it all ended in San Diego—your best friend on the team, LaDainian Tomlinson, sure was pissed about it, had to bite his lip over it—but, optimist you are are, you said everything happens for a reason, and that Going to California helped make you a better quarterback.

Then it was off to post-Katrina New Orleans, where you found your football soulmate, Sean Payton. When it was obvious San Diego was going to show you the door, Payton couldn't get you off his mind.

Payton said he liked everything about you—"he gets rid of it, he's accurate, he's decisive, and I think he's a tough sack." He said you always knew where you wanted to go with the football. He said your decision making was exemplary. He said you were a winner and that he knew Nick Saban made a mistake letting you slip out of signing with Miami.

But New Orleans is where you wanted to be. It appealed to you in a visceral way. You wanted to be a leader in bringing this great city back.

It was a cause, and it was love at first sight.

That first season you shocked the football world by leading the Saints all the way to the NFC championship game before falling to the Bears on a snowy day in Chicago and losing to Grossman—well, that made it even that much harder to swallow.

You never dreamed it would take three years to get another chance but you know this game is as much about serendipity as talent.

You turned 30 in January, and you know that, after 30 in this game, you're living on borrowed time.

"Every year is critical," Payton said. "But certainly there is a sense of urgency."

You are playing at a high level. You are leading at a high level. Payton says the idea of a window of opportunity with you is fair because you're 30 now. "But, hey, we just spent the entire season talking about a 40-year-old quarterback (Brett Favre)."

But you and Payton know it's a cruel league and that Favre is a freak of nature.

Tomorrow, you have the opportunity you've always dreamed of. One that will probably never come again. A chance to play for the NFC championship at the Superdome in New Orleans.

You're Drew Brees, and you want to strike while the arm is still hot.