Drew Brees: No place he’d rather be than the Superdome on Thanksgiving

Drew Brees will be back in the Superdome on Thanksgiving night.

He will be calling the Saints game against the Bills along with Mike Tirico for NBC Sports.

It will be Brees’ first assignment covering the Saints since he retired from them after last season.

On a conference call Tuesday, Brees said the experience, which will include him being honored by the Saints at halftime, “shapes up to be a pretty incredible night.”

The Saints are 3-0 on Thanksgiving, all with Brees playing quarterback. Now he’ll get a first-hand look at how the Saints are doing without him and have a platform for providing his insight.

Brees demonstrated the preparation he already has done not only on his former team but also on a Bills team that the Saints beat 47-10 in 2017, the last time the two teams met.

“In my opinion,” Brees said, “the Saints defense and the Buffalo defense have been probably the two most consistent defenses all year long. If you look at them week after week, the games they’ve put together and just the way they’ve played, it’s been very, very consistent.”

That wasn’t the case last week, Brees acknowledged, when the Saints lost at Philadelphia, 40-29, and the Bills lost at home to Indianapolis, 45-10.

He also noted that “their offenses aren’t really playing well right now” after the Bills turned the ball over four times and the Saints turned it over three times on Sunday.

Brees pointed to the Saints falling behind by more than 10 points each week as a key factor in their current three-game losing streak, their longest since 2016.

“They just have to find a way to start games faster,” Brees said. “By the time they get to the fourth quarter they’re having to create some miraculous comeback and that’s just too little, too late.

“I think they have the type of makeup on the team, leadership wise and everything else, to win tight games, but they’ve just got to keep them tight.”

Tirico, who has worked with Brees on seven broadcasts of Notre Dame games as well as “probably a dozen studio shows” this season, praised the rookie analyst’s performance.

“I just think it’s been really great to watch how hard Drew has worked at this because he’s doing something that’s unique,” Tirico said. “He’s coming in and being a studio analyst for the NFL and calling games for college. That’s really two different skill sets and obviously very different pools to jump into.”

Brees cited his call of the Notre Dame game against Purdue, his alma mater, as evidence that he’s prepared to offer an objective perspective on the NFL team for which he played 15 seasons on his way to becoming thee most prolific passer in NFL history.

“I do have a job to do and I’m going to be a pro,” Brees said. “And so I don’t think anybody has to worry about that. I will call it as I see it. And I will try to give everybody a very enjoyable experience from my perspective with my insight alongside Mike.”

NBC noted that Brees’ 281 touchdown passes and 35,505 passes yards in games at the Superdome are each the most by a player at one venue in NFL history.

Brees, whose family is making the trip with him, pointed out that this will be his first time inside the Superdome with a full house in two years because of COVID restrictions during his final season.

“No place I’d rather be,” he said.