OXNARD, Calif. – With Drew Brees up on the podium giving his acceptance speech Saturday wearing the emblematic gold jacket during his Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Canton, Ohio, some 2,400 miles from here, there became these five degrees of separation in some form or fashion with the Dallas Cowboys.
First, former Cowboys Super Bowl winning offensive coordinator Norv Turner was the San Diego head coach in 2001 when the Chargers plucked Brees out of Purdue with the first pick in the second round of the NFL Draft.
The next season and for three more after that with the Chargers, his head coach became Marty Schottenheimer, the father of Cowboys current head coach Brian Schottenheimer.
And for those four seasons, young Brian Schottenheimer became his quarterbacks coach with the Chargers.
His next head coach after he became a free agent, and with Marty Schottenheimer committed to Philip Rivers and the Chargers uninterested in re-signing Brees in 2006, his next head coach became Sean Payton, the first-year head coach of the New Orleans Saints after spending four seasons with the Cowboys (2002-05) on Bill Parcells staff as quarterback coach, assistant head coach and pass game coordinator.
Imagine that, though here comes the other twist of fate.
In 2001, after Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman retired in the spring, the Cowboys were badly in need of a quarterback. Problems were, first they did not have a first-round draft choice for 2001, having traded what turned out to be the seventh pick in that draft for wide receiver Joey Galloway in 2000. Next, this was in retrospect a poor quarterback draft class. Only one quarterback was selected in the first round, that being Michael Vick by Atlanta with the very first selection.
The Cowboys first pick then became 22nd in the second round after trading down early in the second, and unfortunately for the QB-needy Cowboys only one other quarterback had been taken after Vick.
And demonstrating the lack of high-profile quarterbacks in this draft, no other quarterback was even selected after the Chargers grabbed Brees with the first pick in the second round until the Cowboys, again, desperate for quarterback help, then chose Quincy Carter. If only the Cowboys had moved up in the draft. If only they had not traded two firsts for Galloway, who knows. Maybe, possibly Brees could have been their guy.
Crazy this NFL history.
Brees though during an inspiring acceptance speech chose to honor Marty Schottenheimer, saying the late Schottenheimer was "one of the greatest coaches in this game and who belongs here in Canton. Marty was my biggest fan. He'd tell me that all the time even as he benched me three times and made me fight for my job with two great quarterbacks, Doug Flutie and Philip Rivers."
Then came this story involving Brian Schottenheimer while Schotty was busy conducting Saturday's practice on Cowboys Family Weekend out here at the River Ridge Sports Complex, first saying, "Thank you to coach Cam Cameron and Brian Schottenheimer.
"I'll never forget this film session in 2003. I was coming off a tough game, and we were watching the tape, and they asked me this question: 'Hey, why didn't you throw to this receiver, to which my response was, 'I couldn't see him.' The tape paused, there was a moment of silence, they glared at me and said, 'It's your job to see.'
"You reach a point in your career when you stop making excuses. It's usually a moment or an event you flip a switch or make a conscious decision, and it becomes part of your being. They were right and never again would I use those words or thoughts to come out of my mouth. It would shape me for what comes next.
"New Orleans."
And that brought the house down, a huge throng of Saints fans beginning to party as if they were in the French Quarter.
That "next" began the 2006 season with Payton in New Orleans and the advent of Tony Romo's starting career, Sean instrumental in helping the Cowboys sign Romo as an undrafted rookie free agent out his alma mater Eastern Illinois in 2003. Romo would take over the Cowboys quarterback position midway through the 2006 season for the next nine years until Dak took over in 2016 for the injured Romo and for Kellen Moore, the presumed 2016 backup to Romo who coincidently is now the Saints head coach.
A whole lot of NFL coincidences for sure.
