Drew Brees had already closed the book on football. Then Dan Fouts showed up at his door with news that would send him to Canton. Brees had been voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the final stamp on a 20-year career that had already been over for five seasons.

Then came the strange part. The morning after learning he was a Hall of Famer, Brees found himself wondering whether his body could still handle one more NFL game. He even called Hall of Fame CEO Jim Porter, jokingly checking whether a comeback would affect his induction. Once he was assured it would not, Brees took his son Callen to a nearby field and started throwing. Mind you, this was not a regular father-son throwing session. 

After Bo Nix suffered a season-ending ankle injury against the Buffalo Bills, the Denver Broncos had begun exploring an option few would have imagined: bringing the 47-year-old Brees out of retirement for the AFC Championship Game. Former Saints assistants Joe Lombardi and Pete Carmichael contacted Brees about the possibility, according to ESPN. But there was a problem with that conversation that had nothing to do with Brees’ arm.

Based on the report that Schefter shared, Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio suggested that the Broncos might face a tampering case against them. But Payton wasn’t going to let the NFL think that his team tried to recruit a retired player. What makes it worse is that Brees is technically still a Saints star. Contacting Brees without informing the Saints could put the Broncos in trouble. 

“Even if the Saints don’t file a tampering complaint, the league can act without one,” Florio claimed. “For example, the NFL whacked the Dolphins in 2022 for tampering after it stumbled over evidence that Miami had tampered with Payton and Tom Brady while investigating an unrelated matter.” 

It’s worth noting that Lombardi and Carmichael didn’t involve Sean Payton in their plans. Payton, before joining the Broncos, was the head coach for the New Orleans Saints during Brees’ active years. Naturally, Brees reached out to him. And Payton revealed his side of the story after the Broncos lost the season opener against the Kansas City Chiefs. 

“Drew had reached out, I think, right after the championship or right after the playoff win against Buffalo,” Payton told reporters on Tuesday. “I think he called Pete, probably texted Pete or Joe, those guys. None of it even came to my attention. So, when the story came up in Canton, I kept thinking they were just talking about the COVID season. Even in the COVID season when he and I discussed possibly coming back for a Monday night game, he had trouble throwing it. 

“I don’t think really anything really came of it. I think in Drew’s mind, there’s that competitor in him. So, I was kind of out of the loop. I don’t think it’s a big story. But nonetheless, certainly one that once they described it to me, it just never got to my level, I guess. He had reached out to Pete, I think, and then Joe.” 

Payton’s version creates a wrinkle of its own. Brees’ account to Ed Werder was that former Saints coaches now with Denver contacted him, while Payton said Brees reached out to Pete Carmichael and Joe Lombardi. But Florio’s concern does not hinge entirely on who sent the first message. The bigger question is whether Denver personnel were discussing a move with a player whose NFL rights were still tied to another club.

And there was another obstacle that had nothing to do with Denver’s intentions. Even if Brees had been healthy enough to play, he could not simply “unretire” in January and take the Broncos’ quarterback job. Under the league’s reserve-retired rules, a player had to be reinstated by the Tuesday following Week 13 to return that season. Brees’ potential comeback came long after that deadline. New Orleans would also have had to release him before another team could pursue him through the applicable transaction process.

That is what makes Florio’s Dolphins comparison relevant. In 2022, the NFL’s investigation found that Miami had impermissible communications with Tom Brady while he was under contract with the Patriots and later the Buccaneers. The Dolphins also contacted Sean Payton’s agent about Payton becoming their head coach while he was still under contract with New Orleans. The league found three separate tampering violations and took Miami’s 2023 first-round pick and 2024 third-round pick. Owner Stephen Ross was suspended through Oct. 17, 2022, and fined $1.5 million, while vice chairman Bruce Beal was fined $500,000.

But the comparison has limits. Miami’s violations involved years of communications, Brady’s agent, Payton’s agent and senior Dolphins officials. There is no comparable finding against Denver at this point. What exists is a report that two Broncos assistants contacted Brees, a retired player still on the Saints’ reserve-retired list. An NFL investigation, if one ever happens, would have to establish whether those conversations actually violated the league’s anti-tampering policy.

The league has also shown that an investigation does not automatically mean punishment. Philadelphia was investigated after questions arose over its pursuit of Saquon Barkley, but the NFL concluded there was not enough evidence to establish a tampering violation. More recently, Atlanta lost a 2025 fifth-round pick and was fined $250,000 for anti-tampering violations involving Kirk Cousins, Darnell Mooney and Charlie Woerner; the NFL characterized those violations as administrative rather than the kind of conduct seen in Miami.

That leaves us with just one question.

Why did Drew Brees not return to the NFL despite the alluring invite?

The short answer: his arm made the call for him, and it wasn’t a surprise decision. He’d already said as much in 2023, telling ESPN that years of throwing had worn his shoulder down to the point his right arm wasn’t the same anymore.

So when he actually took Callen out to test it, he was checking whether there was anything left at all. There wasn’t. Brees found his right wrist and shoulder too damaged to put a 15-yard throw on target with anything close to NFL velocity. That ended the conversation.

There’s an odd coda to that. Months earlier, Brees had already acknowledged how much his throwing arm had changed after his NFL career and shoulder surgery. In June, he said he had reached a point where he now threw better left-handed, explaining that he had started doing so with his children late in his career when his right arm was too worn out after practice. “I would know where to throw it, I just don’t know if I could get it there,” Brees said.

The Hall of Fame timing adds a layer most coverage has skipped over. Players need five years removed from the game to qualify for Canton, and Brees had just cleared that mark. Had he actually gone back to play for Denver, that clock would have reset, pushing his eligibility back to somewhere around 2031. That’s likely why the call to Jim Porter wasn’t just a joke between friends. Brees needed the answer before he let himself get excited about throwing again.

Denver, meanwhile, went with Jarrett Stidham after Nix’s injury. Stidham started the AFC Championship Game against New England, but the Broncos fell 10–7. The quarterback who might have been standing behind center that day instead spent the year becoming a Hall of Famer.

And that leaves the Broncos with the more complicated question: whether the brief attempt to make that impossible comeback happen will end with nothing more than an extraordinary what-if, or whether the league decides the way Denver explored it was worth investigating.