http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/peter_king/07/04/mmqb/1.html Well, if Saban really believed the Medical Staff's report he made the right decision, one that really cannot be second guessed imho..
Brees made the right decision even though it was on a gut feeling. You cant argue that he didnt find the right fit in N.O .as opposed to an unstable situation in Miami.
We have a "sketchy" medicnal department. It's like they use a Mr. Potato Head to make their diagnosis.
Either that is the best piece of sarcasm I've ever read, or I'm really missing out on your line of thinking. I'm a little thick skulled, so maybe you could elaborate?
true if saban goes against the medical report and is wrong he would have been forced to go to alabama. In the end it turned out wrong for us but you have a med staff for a reason. you have to trust them. the thing I second guess still was going after culpepper. the guy was bad before his injury. nothing changed.
This is still painful to even think about. It's not surprising to learn that a standup guy with integrity like Drew Brees decided not to play for an egomaniac with no character like Nick Saban. Amazing how Nicky still insists he did something good for the Dolphins. He contributed a lot more to the Saints' recent success. Just thinking about that little weasel makes me sick. If you ever need proof life isn't fair just look at him and his recent college success.
I don't think he was trying to woo him. Saban actually did the prudent thing by trusting the teams medical experts.
The Saints got Brees and a Super Bowl, the Dolphins got Culpepper and a 1-15 record. As an eventual result though we got Parcells and a total overhaul.
You can talk about the medical staff here, you can talk about Saban or whatever but I find this stuff hard to believe that our 'offer' to him was as good as the Saints was or at least pretty close and he didn't sign here ?? It means to me that he simply chose NO over Miami for whatever reason he had. Saban wasn't telling Brees "we don't want you" after the offer was on the table ?? Bottom line was he chose to be there instead of here....Did he not like Saban ?? Maybe. Did he not like our teams' chances even with him here ?? Maybe. Did his wife not feel comfortable in Miami ?? Maybe. But whatever the reason HE (Brees) chose to go elsewhere...not the Miami medical staff, and not Saban...
Eh these decisions happen with so many free agents every year. This is just one of the few times we're hearing about it in full detail. Its way past the time to move on from it.
Because there's so much historical precedence favoring QBs who suffer the same degree of injury on their throwing shoulder? Get real. It's revisionist's history.
Have to agree, Saban is a flawed guy personally, but he had to rely on the Dr's concerning the shoulder injury's prospects of recovery. I will say Saban has/had very poor instincts in general, he is not a guy who trusts his gut, taking C-Pepe over Brees was just one example imho. Do appreciate the whole story coming out after 4 yrs, the Saints bought into Brees and his prospects for coming back, Saban wanted to, but ultimately chose the "Safe" route.
Which will mean 0 if we don't net a Super Bowl during their tenure. There's no guarantee we would have got one with Brees/Saban either. Me? I'm happy fro Brees and the Saints. I wanted him bad over Pepper and was pissed at Saban for choosing Jerkoff. But I can't blame him for following the advice of his medical staff. I hate the fact that he's enjoying success in Alabama right now. I wish Yellowjackets upon him.
saban is a college football coach and a good one he is back where he should be if you can't properly throw a challenge flag me.. i was happy tracy porter jumped manning's pass proved you can beat a great passing game with defense that is what i want to see from this tenure
It did suck that Brees didn't come here cause look how great he did. but we didn't get him and can't dwell and look toward the future with Chad Henne. Hopefully he ends up doing better then we could have imagined and maybe Brees didn't come to Miami for a reason...
There is no guarantee that Brees would have become a SB winning QB had he signed with Miami. He would have been better then Culpepper but when they had to chose between a guy with a gimpy leg and a gimpy shoulder they decided on Culpepper. I am over it and it's time to look forward to right now and the future.
This story does not jive with what we heard what happened. Always two sides to a story and of course Brees side says he chose the Saints over Miami. The story I remember is Miami choosing culpepper. And not announcing why they chose Culpepper over Brees to allow Brees to sign with the saints. Doesn't anyone remember talk of the Saints being pissed that our doctors found a full tear of his labrum and not telling them? http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2368259 Nothing in there says Brees chose the Saints over Miami. http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=3673275
Maybe doctors should choose the entire roster. Some guys you can just tell are winners. Chad Pennington is one of them. Drew Brees is another. Daunte Culpepper was never one. As I said before, Nick probably would have had a shot at sensing that had he any character of his own. At worst they would have had Chad Pennington 2.0. Which still would have been much better than Culpepper. It's not as if that's the only player he missed on. He thought he was going to make Jason Allen a superstar. I guess that was the doctors' faults as well.
Difference is, Brees and Saban are the only two who knew what occured, the other stories we've heard over the years weren't directly from one of the two parties, and to be frank, I wouldn't trust what Saban had to say.
I don't blame our medical staff one bit. Do you give $20m guaranteed and $60m total to a QB who then really had only a couple of good but not great years, coming off a 360 degree rotator cuff tear with 12 pins in his throwing shoulder? I don't blame the doctors one bit. They were right to be skeptical about Brees.
I think people are confusing their anger with his lying about leaving and the disappointment of losing out on Brees. Lying about leaving: I don't think many truly understand that situation. His back was against the wall. He had no "right" move when he was asked about Alabama. He couldn't say "yes", because there was a lot of season left and he would have been crucified. He couldn't say "no comment" because that is the same as yes in the eyes of fans and media and it would have upped the level of distraction for the team because it wouldn't have went away. All he could really say was "no". Saying "no" and lying was the absolute best move he could make for the team that year. I really don't think there was any other way to approach that situation. Brees: You can't have a "gut feeling" about someone else's injury. Especially if that gut feeling is predicated on a $20 million gamble. It sucks we lost on that, but no one is really to blame. We want someone to blame, because it sucked that bad, but you can't lay the blame at the feet of Saban, The Medical Staff, Brees or Culpepper. You can however, lay the blame in the place it belongs...in front of Wanny. We could have had Brees before all that happened, and Wanny dropped the ball as he did in every other draft he was apart of.
I distinctly remember Brees himself confirming that he chose New Orleans over Miami. I think at the time we all just shrugged it off as spin, saying really it was Miami that chose Daunte Culpepper over Drew Brees, but it's important to note that from Drew's point of view he felt like he made the choice not to pursue anything with Miami anymore. And this seems perfectly corroborated by his account of the phone conversation with Saban where he felt like Miami had no faith in him. Someone's not saying something, in all of this. The people on Miami's side sure as hell have no reason to tell the truth, the whole truth, pointing out all relevant facts. The people in Miami and connected with that situation still want to pretend they did nothing wrong in that decision. But one way or the other, there wasn't just a 25% chance that Drew would come back from the injury. Something else factored into it, and I don't trust anyone involved in the decision to tell me if there was something that factored into it...because they want to pretend that New Orleans was just lucky and Miami was unlucky. The percentage itself has been subject to change. I've heard accounts that say that Brees had only a 20% chance of coming back while Culpepper had only a 20% chance of not coming back. So even the discrepancy between the 20% and the 25% suggests that there was something that could have been a factor that could have increased Drew's chances of full recovery, and obviously people connected with Miami want to minimize that and pretend they were wrong for the right reasons.
No offense but a lot of this is a load of crap. What choice did Saban have? Well first off he could have chosen NOT to quit on the Miami Dolphins, after giving them a commitment to seeing things through to the finish. He could have chosen NOT to have his agent negotiate with Alabama in secret well before the media asked him questions about the coaching vacancy. He could have chosen to, as he did so many times before on so many subjects, say he's simply not going to talk about Alabama because it has nothing to do with the Miami Dolphins, and then dress down a reporter who insisted on asking about it. He could have chosen to address his own football team in person and let them know why he was leaving, rather than absconding like a thief in the night. He had no choice? He had all the choices he could want. Nobody is forced to lie and anyone that tries to say different is full of BS. He was asked a question. They didn't pry and pry and pry. He volunteered an answer to that question. I think he'd already said he'd had no contact with Alabama, he could have EASILY ended it there and just said I am not going to answer questions about Alabama. He'd done that many times before and basically treated the media like crap, so they were used to it. How many times does Tony Sparano say, I'm not going to talk about this anymore. And when he says that, the media down there listens. Saban is full of excuses. He speaks out of both sides of his mouth at all times. I'm sorry, but oh by the way here's why I shouldn't be sorry at all. I did something wrong, but oh by the way here's some concocted reasoning that shows that I really didn't do anything wrong. I take full responsibility for the team's non-success, but oh by the way it was all the doctors' fault, it was all Wayne Huizenga's fault, it was all Bryan Wiedmeier's fault, it was all Randy Mueller's fault, it was all Zach Thomas and Jason Taylor's fault, it was all Richard Smith's fault, it was all Dom Capers' fault, it was all Mike Mularkey's fault. I take full responsibility, but it was their fault. But I take full responsibility for their mistakes that were forced on me. Oh yeah he was just looking out for his family though, right? Well isn't that convenient, bringing the family into something that was really just all about him. Thank god he dragged his family out of the poverty of Palm Beach to the lap of luxury in Tuscaloosa, I'm sure he was really worried about that.
Oh please. Its a business. He was offered a crap ton of money. Sure he couldn't have accepted or wanted the job, but he did. You can't really fault him for taking a job that had more money instead of staying in a place (the NFL) where loyalty is non existent, no matter how much money he already had. It was the smart decision for himself. You can't actually be serious that he could have ended speculation and prodding by essentially saying, "no comment". You can't be that naive. Why was he asked the question in the first place? Did some reporter, just make it up and lo and behold he was right? No. There were leaks of info coming from the Alabama end of the equation. Those leaks would have persisted, no matter what Saban said publicly. How many times do we have to hear the phrase "where there's smoke there's fire"? I also don't think he's blaming anyone. He's not blaming the doctors. Its a fact they said Brees had virtually no chance of recovery. They were wrong, but that isn't their fault either. Its just circumstances. No one could have known. Its like being mad at a weatherman for saying there's a 30% of rain when it ends up raining. They're making predictions based on all the info they have. It sucks all the way around, but that doesn't mean there has to be a villain in a top hat twirling his mustache.
I don't know how many times myself and others that are willing to realize that we seriously screwed the Brees situation up need to point out a glaring fact. That fact is that the most renowned surgeon in all of sports medicine, James Andrews, who did Drew Brees' surgery and oversaw his rehab, vouched for the health of Drew Bree's shoulder and his readiness for the upcoming season 100%. For our medical staff to supercede this doctor's opinion for their own was a mistake plain and simple. One that cost us years off of our rebuilding timeline. Yeah, it's revisionist history. So what? Looking back on history is how you assess the successes and mistakes an organization has made. Hopefully the Phins will learn from all the boneheaded decisions it's made over the last decade. Yes, it cannot be changed and its done. Dosen't mean we cant see it for the huge mistake it was.
Drew Brees himself just stated the factor that made the decision for him signing with New Orleans over Miami as the faith in his health yet you're still arguing it was money.
I don't care much for Saban as a person. I don't buy the "it's business" argument. I see that as an excuse for crap behavior. I think it also goes hand in hand with all the reports of how badly he treated the staff and how other players have said he lied to them. I half expect that sometime in the future Saban will be caught in a Mel Gibson type rant. I like to believe that it eventually catches up to people when they treat others poorly. That being said, I can't blame Saban for the Brees decision. I was/am a huge Brees fan and felt he would be a great fit here, but the Dolphin medical staff came to a medical conclusion and Saban would have been an idiot to ignore it. And you can't even put it on the Dolphin's medical staff b/c they sent Brees to at least one other doctor for a second opinion (it might have been two other doctors). Brees was a gamble that worked out for the Saints, but it was not an unreasonable decision by Saban.
You're assuming that he left for more money? That's just factually incorrect. He had three years remaining on his Miami contract worth $4.5 million a piece. He signed an eight year deal in Alabama worth $32 million total, with the possibility of winning up to $700k to $800k per year in more money which was tied to Bowl bonuses. By my calculations, that's the same money. Except it wasn't more money. It was less money, with the possibility of earning enough bonuses in any given year to make it about even money or just above the money he was earning in a state with no state taxes. You're pretty naive if you think that Nick Saban and his fascist media policies could not have easily ensured that reporters not bring the subject up again with him by saying that he's had no contact with Alabama and that it has nothing to do with the Miami Dolphins and so he's not going to answer anymore questions about Alabama. Not to mention what Harvey Greene would be saying to reporters behind the scenes. And you're also pretty naive if you think that his denial that he was going to Alabama even made a dent in the rumors and innuendo circulating around that he was, in fact, going to Alabama. It is a fact that Nick Saban and those close to him have at various points suggested that his failures in Miami were due to: 1. Randy Mueller 2. Bryan Wiedmeier and the Dolphins ownership 3. Jason Taylor and Zach Thomas 4. The doctors 5. The coordinators he was "forced" to hire rather than the ones he "wanted" And he continues to blame the media for his being "forced" to lie, even though he absolutely manhandled the media on a regular basis, which includes seething remarks made at various members of that media off camera and for virtually no reason. But that's Nick Saban for you. He takes full responsibility so long as you understand it wasn't his fault.
