Drew Brees: The one that got away for Texas, Texas A&M

Drew Brees grew up 15 minutes from Texas and was a childhood fan of Texas A&M, but neither wanted him. The rest is history.

Drew Brees is the NFL’s passing king after passing Peyton Manning on the career yardage list during Monday night’s game vs. Washington. He is a first-ballot Hall of Famer, but when he was coming out of high school, he only had two scholarship offers, neither of which came from his top two schools, Texas and Texas A&M.

Brees starred at Westlake High School in Austin, leading the program to their only state championship as a senior, and likely would have won as a junior if not for tearing his ACL in the third round of the state playoffs. The knee injury derailed the recruiting attention that would typically follow the best quarterback on the best quarterback in the state of Texas.

By the time Brees was done celebrating the state championship, he had zero scholarship offers, which is unfathomable to think today.

Common sense would suggest the in-state programs, especially Texas and Texas A&M would have checked out the quarterback winning all these games at Westlake, but Brees wasn’t even on their radar.

It’s a shame for them because Brees would go on to Purdue where he led the Boilermakers to a Rose Bowl as a senior, left with most meaningful Big Ten passing records, a Maxwell winner and finished fourth and third in the Heisman as a junior and senior.

Texas head coach John Mackovic didn’t recruit Brees despite Westlake high school about a 15-minute drive from the Longhorns campus. Mackovic had his eyes set on Louisiana standout Major Applewhite who would later commit to the Longhorns, and have a pretty solid career. Applewhite led Texas to a pair of Big 12 championships, gritty comebacks and his heroics in the 2001 Holiday Bowl while battling Chris Simms for playing time during their time in Austin.

Neither was Brees.

It’s impossible to project how Texas would have looked with Brees operating the offense under Mackovic and later Mack Brown, who passed on him when Brees tried to get North Carolina’s attention in the recruiting process. But it’s fair to say, as Brees was putting up Heisman-caliber numbers and Texas was jockeying back and forth between Applewhite and Simms, there could have been a lot of consistency and continuity with Brees under center. Perhaps instead of competing in Cotton and Holiday Bowls, they’d be competing for BCS Championships.

While Texas won a lot of games with Applewhite/Simms at quarterback, the same can’t be said for Texas A&M, which really missed out on not recruiting Brees.

Aggies head coach R.C. Slocum is the winningest in program history, but his biggest miss was not recruiting Brees who grew up a fan of Texas A&M where his parents were alums.

Unlike Texas who had quality options, the Aggies did not, and history could have been different had they pursued the high school legend who was an Aggie legacy.

Texas A&M had Branndon Stewart and Randy McCown in 1997, Brees’ freshman season, and while the numbers were pedestrian, the team went 9-4.

In 1998, Steward and McCown combined for 13 touchdowns, five interceptions and 2,017 yards en route to winning 11 games. A really good record despite the presence of a passing attack. Meanwhile, Brees was just getting started in Joe Tiller’s offense at Purdue where he’d throw for 3,983 yards and 39 touchdowns while completing more than 100 passes than the A&M duo combined to attempt.

Sure, the offenses each school ran isn’t a direct comparison and the Aggies did play in the Sugar Bowl that year. They weren’t exactly regretting (yet) not having the player who would take his game to another level the next two years and become a Heisman finalist.

From 1999-2000, Brees established himself as one of the nation’s best quarterbacks while Texas A&M began to drop off, winning a combined 15 games, with a total of 24 touchdown passes from McCown and 2000 starter Mark Farris. Brees threw 25 and 26 in his last two seasons by himself and the Boilers started to knock off the Big Dogs in the Big Ten his senior year, tying for the conference championship and leading his team to the Rose Bowl.

Meanwhile, Texas A&M was losing the Alamo and Independence Bowl. Two years later, Slocum resigned after going 6-6 and ushered in nine years of relative mediocrity under Dennis Franchione and Mike Sherman before Kevin Sumlin came to College Station and brought Kerr High School standout, Johnny Manziel with him.

It’s fair to ask, what if Texas or Texas A&M successfully recruited Brees back then because the record books and college football history would look radically different.

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