Drew Brees had one non-negotiable rule: his huddle was his kingdom. One Saints coach learned that lesson the hard way after trying to single out a struggling rookie. Taking a trip down memory lane, Brees recalls a practice in the Louisiana heat, where former New Orleans Saints guard Carl Nicks was bent over in the huddle, trying to catch his breath. That’s when Offensive Line Coach Doug Marrone stepped in and was all over the rookie. The quarterback ended up doing something no player ever does to their coach.

“I’m stepping up into the huddle again to call a play, and Carl is just kind of bent over, just sucking air,” Brees said on the New Heights podcast. “Marone, just to kind of make a point, he goes into the huddle to grab Nicks to like, you know, stand him up. And I don’t know what came over me, but like, I just have a rule that when I step in the huddle, it’s my huddle.”

“I want all eyes on me,” Brees went on to say. “I’m leading this. And so when Marone stepped into the huddle, I didn’t even think about it. I just reacted. I grabbed Doug Marone, and I threw him out of the huddle. And I said, I got him. And I looked at Nicks, and I was going to kind of help him up and be like, come on, big fella, let’s go, you know.”

Coaches aren’t usually escorted out of a huddle by their own players, but Brees understood the pressure Nicks was under. The Saints’ LG, Jamar Nesbit, had been suspended to begin the season for violating the league’s substance policy, so Nicks was tasked with protecting a franchise quarterback from day one.

After the incident, Brees remembered Nicks straightening up, chest out, telling him, in so many words, nobody would touch him as long as he was there, forming the ideal QB-OL bond.

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“So we drafted Carl Nicks out of Nebraska, like fifth round. It was a steal because he was one of the most giant human beings you’ve ever seen, right? Like 6’4″, 360 or something,” Brees recalled.

The belief paid off, as Nicks played all 16 games as a rookie, and Brees was sacked just 13 times while throwing for 5,069 yards and 34 touchdowns that season. Over the next three years, Nicks became a consistent starter, starting every game in 2010 and 2011, and recognition followed.

Nicks’ body of work earned him two Pro Bowl selections, a consensus first-team All-Pro nod in 2011, and second-team All-Pro honors in 2010. During Nicks’ four seasons in New Orleans, Brees threw for 19,553 yards and 147 touchdowns, and the Saints captured the Super Bowl following the 2009 campaign.

This wasn’t the first time that players and coaches from the same team have gotten involved in an altercation. For example, during a 2025 playoff game, Texans defensive back Kris Boyd shoved special teams coach Frank Ross after a tense sequence on a kickoff. There was another incident involving Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon, who shoved running back Emari Demercado after a costly fumble. However, cases where a player is protecting their teammate by shoving a coach are few and far between.

As for Nicks, he eventually left for a five-year, $47.5 million deal with the Buccaneers, but injuries shortened his career, and his career effectively ended two seasons later. But for everything he achieved in that short while, what happened in that 2008 practice certainly played a part, and Nicks wasn’t the last rookie to benefit from Brees’s leadership.

That instinct to protect and mentor his teammates, even physically removing a coach from the huddle, defined Brees’s leadership style, a style that continues to influence young Saints players even in his retirement, as rookie quarterback Tyler Shough recently discovered.

Brees’ leadership continues to shape Saints rookies

Five years removed from retirement and now a Hall of Famer, Drew Brees is still helping out the rookies in New Orleans, and this time, it was Tyler Shough who felt the impact.

Shough didn’t win AP Offensive Rookie of the Year honors, but he gave New Orleans Saints fans something steady to build on and something to look forward to. He made it clear that Brees played a pivotal role in all his success this year.

“He’s awesome. He’s an incredible mentor because of just who he is on and off the field,” Shough said. “He’s the pinnacle of being a quarterback, in my opinion. He was big for me.”

It was Brees’ advice that inspired the rookie to be better every single day.

“I got to talk to him during the season when I was still a backup about his process and, ‘How do you attack each day?’ It really helped me when I got my opportunity of just going out there, not making anything different and just attacking,” Shough added.

The rookie even revealed the biggest thing he took away from Brees’ lessons.

“It was you have to treat each day and each week with your process the same, regardless of who you’re playing, the outcome, what your role is,” Shough remarked. “That way, whenever you’re out there, the moment doesn’t feel too big. I feel like that really resonated with me.”

The effect of Brees’s mentorship was evident when Shough took over for the struggling Spencer Rattler, guiding the team to a 5-4 record while throwing for 2,384 yards and 10 touchdowns.

Whether by physically defending them in the huddle or by offering veteran wisdom, Drew Brees’s legacy in New Orleans is defined by his commitment to protecting and elevating his teammates, a standard that continues to resonate long after his retirement.