Dan Lawton : Journalist

Drew,

Tough night on Thursday, man.  So tough.

When I woke up in a nightmarish, cold sweat at 6 a.m with the lights on and a half-finished PBR spilled across my bed, I knew something bad had happened.   Then, it came back to me—all of the horror at once—and I doubled over in pain at memories of the thing that had occurred just hours before.

The record is dead, Drew.  I know it was you who set it, but I’ve been living vicariously through you for so long that it’s hard for me to believe that I wasn’t instrumental to the cause. In fact, at the San Diego game, I want you to know that I broke a record of my own in tribute.

47 high fives.  All captured on camera.  Here are a few of my favorite ones.

It was a tough day today, man.  It was rough for me in the morning when I peeled off my Drew Brees MVP T-shirt and wobbled into the shower.  I could barely brush my teeth.  My energy was zapped.  The Falcons.  Those dirty, dirty birds.

Then I left the house and saw the front page of the paper with the headline that said Threw it Away, and I thought I was going to be sick. On the radio, the haters started to hate. Some early morning blowhard on WWL, who couldn’t hit Colston on a skinny post if his life depended on it, said that you should give back some of the $100 million.  Somebody said they should have put Chase Daniel in.

On Nola.com,  Jeff Duncan said it was your fault, said, “Brees wasn’t part of the reason the New Orleans Saints lost to the Falcons 23-13.  He was THE reason they lost.”

There were 325 comments on that article.  Here’s a particularly vituperative one.

Drew, the thing is that I’ve basically been using the lift I get from watching you slash through NFL defenses with your gilded right arm as emotional sustenance for the last five years.  When some people have a bad day, they take drugs, drink or watch Lost on DVD.  But, for me, whenever I have a rough moment, I look at your statistics, read your Wikipedia bio and watch YouTube highlights—sometimes even of your Purdue days.

I even watched your person-to-person segment on CBS the other morning and got a little choked up when you started crying about the veterans and talking to your grandfather on the beach of Okinawa.  That was raw, man.

That’s why this morning when people were hating on you, I felt like they were hating on me, too.  So much hating. Why?

Drew, I just want you to know that I’m totally not worried about the seven picks that you threw over the last two games.  In fact, I’m kind of happy that it happened, even though it hurt, because I know that it’s just going to give you more of a motivation to crush it in the future.

I remember when your labrum was torn to shreds in your last game at San Diego; the thing was so busted that you couldn’t even bend your arm.  It was a career-ending injury, that’s what they said.  Even after you had surgery people were skeptical.  The Dolphins even opted to sign Dante Culpepper instead of you.  Nice one, Nick Saban.

Yet, you ended up in New Orleans, and you’ve crushed it at such a high level over the last six years that we’ve become spoiled by your excellence.  Now, after a two-game funk, people are turning sour.

Not me, Drew.  Not your bro, Dan.  I’m a lifer—I have no other idols.  I’m a believer.  I know this thing will be straightened out.   I got confidence in you, man.

So, today, if you need a lift, just know that in an apartment only minutes from your Uptown estate, I’ve just purchased another dozen birthmark temporary tattoos and am still desperately trying to pull a blockbuster trade to get you on my fantasy squad.  In fact, I think I even found a solution for the sheets I soiled with spilled beer last night.

Your biggest fan,

Dan