Drew Brees felt ready to “grip it and rip it” and did just that

[Gumbo]

Getty Images

Drew Brees acknowledged his surgically-repaired thumb won’t fully heal for three months. But Dr. Steven Shin, who performed the surgery on Brees on Sept. 18, signed off on the quarterback’s return in Week Eight.

Brees looked like Brees in his first game back, completing 34 of 43 passes for 373 yards with three touchdowns and an interception in a 31-9 victory over the Cardinals. He passed the 75,000-yard mark for his career.

“I’m grateful for this team, and grateful for, just this moment, and being able to have this moment,” Brees said, via Katherine Terrell of TheAthletic.com. “I feel like there’s a lot of great moments ahead, but I’m going to really appreciate each and every one of them, . . . going try to stay in the moment and make the most of it.”

Shin inserted an internal brace during Brees’ surgery to expedite recovery, giving Brees a chance to return in a little less than six weeks. Some outside the organization wondered aloud whether the Saints should hold out Brees until Week 10, the game after the team’s bye week.

The Saints were undefeated with Teddy Bridgewater, after all.

“I know the thought would be, why don’t you just wait until after the bye week, everything seems to be going well, right? So why take the chance? [But] I’m a football player, you know?” Brees said. “And like I said, just that gratitude that came over me right before the game is just that, I’m blessed to play this game, and I love this game, and I love my teammates. I love being with them. I love going on the field with them. That was my motivating factor through this whole thing: Get back so I can be healthy, so I can play for those guys. As soon as I could get back, I was going to get back. I didn’t care about anything else. That would’ve been the safe bet, the safe play to do that, but I love the game; I love my team, so I wanted to be out there with them.”

So as soon as Brees “could grip it and rip it” he was going to return. That was Sunday.

It proved to be the right decision: Brees looked great and made it out healthy, and the Saints won big.

“Honestly, we talked about this decision and we really just paid attention to the doctors,” Saints coach Sean Payton said. “We weren’t going to be careless with it.

“I know there’s a sentiment of ‘Wait until the bye,’ but look, if a player is 100 percent healthy and ready to go and someone like him, who I trust, and he looked fabulous all week in practice, this is an important game. Each one of these 16 games has the same value. We’re close to the six-week mark now. But, yeah, to have a game like we had today, we scored a lot in the second half. It was a good win.”