This is my Super Bowl shirt. I will tell you why.
There have been athletes with messianic nicknames before. Basketball Jesus. Purple Jesus. These are odd because the Bible doesn’t make a big deal out of Jesus’ ability to throw something exactly where he wants it to go or avoid people trying to knock him over.
And now Breesus.This one makes more sense than you might think.
Drew Brees was the quarterback for my favorite NFL team, the San Diego Chargers. In the final game of 2005, he injured his shoulder. The Chargers let him go.
The Miami Dolphins thought about signing him. The New Orleans Saints told Brees that he would be their guy, but Brees didn’t decide to be a Saint until he got lost with head coach Sean Payton. David Fleming’s ESPN The Magazine article describes the experience like this:
While Payton was driving Brees around New Orleans, the coach took a wrong turn off I-10 and got lost for 45 minutes in some of the worst parts of the ravaged city. The air still reeked of raw sewage, and mountainous piles of debris dotted a landscape straight out of a Cormac McCarthy novel. At some point during their wanderings, Brees felt a calling. “I realized the city, the Saints and me, we all had something to rebuild — and we could all do it together,” he says. “It was a defining moment of my life.”
Brees chose to rebuild. This article about his reaction to the “Breesus” nickname shows that his reaction is mixed, but it also uses the word “transformation” to refer to what the QB has lead for both the franchise and the hurricane ravaged city. The Bible does make a big deal out Jesus’ ability to transform.
The Breesus nickname has nothing to do with Brees’s accuracy or ability to avoid the pass rush and everything to do with his choice to be a part of restoring a broken city.
When I first heard the nickname, I wasn’t so sure about it, and I’m a Brees fan. I’ve grown accustomed to rooting for him because of his days with the Chargers (plus, he’s been my fantasy football keeper QB since he signed with the Saints). But Breesus?
When I started thinking about the impact he’s had on New Orleans, the fact that people are associating his life with Jesus, and the fact that Paul instructs people who follow Jesus to imitate Jesus, I started thinking about whether or not people would look at my life and draw parallels with me+Jesus as easily as they do Brees+Jesus.
I got the shirt not only to wear for fun at Second Mile’s Souper Bowl Party, but as a reminder that it’s possible for a life to make people think of Jesus. People think of Basketball Jesus or Purple Jesus and think only of superhuman physical abilities. People see the trajectory of Brees’s interaction with New Orleans and think of Jesus’ interaction with humanity: redemption+transformation.
