New Orleans Saints fans spent much of Drew Brees' career defending his greatness, and even as he's on the cusp of being immortalized in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, old habits die hard. There's still a part that feels like Brees is still a bit underrated. One of the latter points used against him was arm strength, and his former teammate Lance Moore strongly shut that down this week.
Moore clapped back at anyone criticizing Brees' arm strength on the latest episode of the Saints Squad Show. "The reason people talked about that was because he didn't throw 60 yard bombs all the time, but guess what, that wasn't a huge part of our offense," Moore said. He spoke to seeing Brees showcasing his arm strength in practice when the only objective was to show how far he could throw, opposed to operating in system.
The second reason Moore feels Brees' arm strength wasn't always on full display in games is because it didn't have to be. Moore continued, "you never really had to rifle balls into certain places because his timing was so impeccable. His timing and accuracy was so on point he didn't have to panic and hurry and try to jam one in."
Drew Brees' arm strength was always a false narrative for the Hall of Famer
The arm strength argument is one of the reason that Saints fans feel the need to race to Brees' defense. Air yards wasn't even a talking point until it was brought up to discredit the quarterback in his latter years.
Honestly, the advanced stat's shelf life didn't last long after Brees stepped away from the game. Even as the years have gone along, arm strength has been used as a stat to go against Brees.
The thing is, though, that Brees was an elite deep ball thrower in his prime, and he had a long prime. Argue all you want about how strong his arm or wasn't. Brees was a marksman when it came to throwing the ball deep earlier in his career.
From 2008-2013, Brees led the league in deep ball touchdowns every single year. Not in totality over the span but Brees was number one every year. He also led the NFL in deep ball completions yards, completions and touchdowns multiple times over his career.
That doesn't sound like the type of player to hear about arm strength concerns.It was a narrative that was always overblown and caught more steam in his final seasons. For some reason, that began to be treated like it was his whole career.
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