He finished having completed 24-of-36 passes for 261 yards and two touchdowns, and kept Purdue in a game against a very good team. That’s when he threw the first of two interceptions that sealed a loss for Purdue and set up a game-winning field goal for Notre Dame.ĭespite the way it ended, it’s hard to forget Brees’ play before the interceptions. 23 Notre Dame in South Bend, a place the Boilermakers went without a win from 1974-2004.īrees considered this the biggest game of his life, and he played almost perfectly until about the final two minutes. 26, 1998: 58 minutes of perfection against Notre Dameīrees and Purdue went toe-to-toe with No. Westlake would not win another state title until the 2019 season. He finished that season with 3,529 passing yards and 31 touchdowns. The game ended in a 55-15 blowout win, and Brees solidified his place in Westlake history. Brees’ locker that night belonged to Troy Aikman. Westlake sailed through its sixth consecutive undefeated regular season to make it to the state title game at Texas Stadium, home to the Dallas Cowboys. We had 100 percent confidence in him as our leader it was up to the rest of us to fill in the missing pieces.” “If you watched any of our 1995 film, you saw exactly what Drew could do. “Drew was still a bit slow coming into the season, but no one has ever outworked Drew Brees,” former defensive back and quarterback Johnny Rodgers told the Austin American-Statesman in 2016. Nobody was thinking much about Brees or Westlake High School entering the 1996 season. 7, 1996: Brees leads Westlake to first state championship “Now I realized that my injury was really the best thing that could have happened to me.” Dec. “At the time I thought my ACL tear was the worst-case scenario,” Brees wrote. That led him to enroll at Purdue.īrees detailed his rehab in his book “Coming Back Stronger,” noting that he rehabbed 4-5 hours a day and gained 25 pounds of muscle in the process. His injury not only ended his team’s chances of a state title that year (they lost the following week), but also caused all of the major colleges in Texas to pull back on his recruitment. He went down with an ACL tear in his left knee in the Texas 5A playoffs during his junior season. 2, 1995: The ACL tear and the comebackīrees has called his first major football injury one of the pivotal moments in his life. But it’s more than just the records and the championships that made Brees one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. We attempted to break down his best moments dating back to his high school days. I was a little jittery, a little nervous, but eventually I got used to it.”īrees would gain a little more confidence over the years, as he went on to win a championship for Westlake, took Purdue to the Rose Bowl, secured a Lombardi Trophy and broke just about every record at every stage.
“I’m glad it’s over,” Brees said at the time. He completed 11-of-16 passes, including his final 10, for 167 yards and a 33-yard touchdown pass. 9, 1995, when he played his first varsity game for Westlake High School in Austin, Texas.Ī nervous Brees, then just 16 years old and 170 pounds, won his first game that night, a 38-14 decision over New Braunfels Canyon in front of 1,500 fans. But Brees’ career began long before the San Diego Chargers selected him in the second round of the 2001 NFL Draft.
0 kommentar(er)
