"We had all the same information," Loomis said. "We did have one doctor – I can’t really remember his name right now – that said something that really resonated with me. First of all, Dr. (James) Andrews was very confident in Drew’s ability and opportunity to come back. But (the other) doctor who had experience with this similar type of injury and surgery in baseball told me, ‘In Year 1, he may not be 100 percent. But by Year 2, he should be pretty darn close.’

"So in our mind, even if it doesn’t work out in Year 1, then we’re just waiting for two years. When you draft a quarterback No. 1, you’re gonna be waiting two or three or four years before you get an optimum performance from a draft player, considering the learning curve. So it wasn’t just one bite of the apple. If it didn’t work out this year, hey, look, this guy’s got another opportunity in Year 2. Thank goodness, given who Drew is and the way he works, and the surgery is successful that he was able to come back in Year 1. But I think even Drew would say Year 2 he felt even better.

"I never heard anyone say, ‘No.’ But there were some that said, ‘Hey, I don’t know if he’ll be back 100 percent this year.’ They had different ideas of how long it would take for him to come back. I think all of the guys we talked to thought he could rehab and could perform at a high level again."

How worried was he when Brees went to Miami to meet with Saban and Co.? Real worried.

"Really fearful, because let’s be honest, we’re in New Orleans and it’d been under water three months earlier and you drive through the city and you’re seeing boats on top of houses and all these things," Loomis said. "You don’t have all the services, the schools are closed, all those different things that happened. And now you send the guy down to Miami."

Part of Loomis' confidence in Brees had nothing to do with the medicals, but rather was intangible.

"In came up first in our due diligence," Loomis said. "You start talking to people who’d been part of his career in high school, in college, at San Diego, you just kept hearing over and over again about the competitiveness, the toughness, the leadership qualities. He’d been told a number of times in his life, ‘Hey, you can’t do this.’ And yet, every time, he did it.

"That resonates with you, especially if you’re coming off a serious injury and people have some doubts about you. We didn’t have any doubt he was going to be hardest working guy in the training room.

"It’s hard to describe when somebody has ‘it’, it’s hard to identify what ‘it’ is, until you see ‘it’. When you see ‘it’, you know ‘it’. You can’t describe it, it’s hard to describe, but it’s the way he carries himself, the way he communicates, every little nuance and thing, says, ‘Wow, we can follow this guy. Our team will follow this guy.’"

Pretty cool story, anyway, with plenty of layers attached.