What's in a walk

I don't know if this is the last we'll see of  Drew Brees on a football field. Body language lies sometimes, even if it's not as good at it as politicians and assorted other hucksters.

But that sure looked like a valedictory walk down there in New Orleans last night.

Tampa Bay had picked him three times and Brees' season was over on the skinny end of a 30-20 score, and here he came, headed for the tunnel. What fans were there put their hands together for him. Brees kept walking. He raised his fist and then his eyes to acknowledge them, and you could see his face kind of working with the emotion of it, and he kept walking.

The fans kept putting their hands together. Brees kept walking, fist raised. And then, just as he stepped out of the end zone and into the tunnel, he turned his head and looked back.

It was just one look. And it didn't last but a second or so. But the magic Twitter machine and several other social media machines immediately seized on it as One Last Lingering Look Back At His Decorated Career.

Maybe it was. Maybe it was just social media trying to craft the sort of neat hospital-corners narrative it seems to crave. I can go either way on it. 

All I know is this: If that was a valedictory walk, and that look back was imbued with some special significance, the curtain is coming down on something remarkable.

Drew Brees, remember, was never supposed to do what he did. The book on him was he was too short, which is why he didn't go until San Diego took him in the second round of the draft. Then he tore up his shoulder and the Chargers crated him up and shipped him off to New Orleans the way you take a broken piece of furniture to the dump.

Of course, some stuff happened after that.

The broken piece of furniture got better, first of all, and then it got legendary. And now, after 20 seasons in the NFL, there are all these numbers: 80,358 passing yards and 571 touchdowns and a dozen 4,000-yard seasons and five 5,000-yard seasons, and 13 Pro Bowls. And of course a place in the New Orleans community unsurpassed by any athlete's in any community.

Yes, he's still short. I am 6-1 or right next door to it, and I'm a smidge taller. I knew this when Brees was drafted, because I'd been in the same room with him numerous times at Purdue. I also knew this from covering him there: Whoever decided his height mattered had clearly not watched him play very much.

He also got tagged as a mere product of Joe Tiller's spread offense, a system quarterback who only thrived because of the system. Of course, if you think about it, every successful quarterback is a system quarterback to some extent. But it was one more strike against him.

Twenty years later, though, he's still around. At 42 this fall, he threw for 2,942 yards and 24 touchdowns while sitting out a month of the season with 11 broken ribs -- 11! -- and a punctured lung. Yet there he was again last night, answering the bell. 

Maybe that bell has rung for the last time. The walk and the look, for all social media perhaps embellished it, seemed at least to hint as much.

But if it has, what beautiful music it's made.