After reading yet another section of Coming Back Stronger, by Drew Brees, I found even more themes within Brees's memoir. In chapter eight, Brees details his initial experiences when he arrived in the city of New Orleans. He tells about how openly all of the people he saw in the city greeted him. Moreover, Brees details the lingering difficulties of his throwing arm at the time. He was still recovering from his shoulder injury and was not one-hundred percent healthy. He describes how he was in an unfamiliar place while he was unable to throw as hard as he was accustomed to throwing normally. However, his doctor kept him grounded, and Brees had to continue to ease his shoulder into the recovery process. Moreover, Brees detailed his transitions off the field in his living in New Orleans, Louisiana. He described his home in New Orleans as he found a beautiful home with his wife, Brittany.
Next, Brees gave more detail concerning his rehab process as he started out throwing soft passes. Basically, Brees had to be extremely patient in the rehab process, especially when he started throwing again. Brees describes the final part of his rehab process as he started to throw the ball with the full range of his shoulder. Brees writes on to describe his first training camp experience with the New Orleans Saints football team. He wrote in his book that by the start of training camp, he was only seventy percent healthy. However, he was still frustrated when he threw some of his first passes in camp. He felt a tremendous amount of pressure to impress all of his believers in the Saint's organization. His first passes were short to the receiver, but coach Sean Payton encouraged Brees by telling him to use his legs. Brees realized that Payton's encouragement helped him get back to his true fundamentals of passing.
Unfortunately, Brees still struggled in the NFL preseason games. He was still bringing his shoulder back to full strength. He specifically noted one particular throw he made in the preseason in which he felt his full strength returning to his shoulder. He threw a perfect deep pass in a game they ended up losing badly, but he still felt very optimistic. His optimism carried over to his attitude regarding the team's prospects going into their 2006 NFL season. He wanted to not only show the team he was a leader, but also help with the team's attitude. To achieve this goal, Brees made a presentation to the Saints the Wednesday before their first regular season game against the Cleveland Browns. In this presentation, Brees displayed an acronym of the word "faith." He described what faith meant to him through his words in his acronym. He may have been referring to his faith in God, but he also wanted the team to realize how important faith was in all aspects of life. He had the team write down their working definition of faith through an acronym and put their acronyms in a place they would look to often. The meeting was a complete success for Brees and the Saints as they began to have faith in themselves as well as everyone around them. At the end of chapter eight, Brees described how the team set their sights on winning their first game. They knew they had a chance to achieve this goal in Cleveland, but at the time, the Saints kept their goal at winning one game. They knew they wanted to come out strong in the season to provide hope to New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. In their hearts, they knew that wins would help provide this hope to the people of New Orleans.
After I completed this particular section of Coming Back Stronger, I found more sections of the book that were not only true for Brees, but also for myself. For example, I have only been injured a few times in my life in sports. However, I completely understand Brees's frustrations when he had to be patient in the recovery process. There is a point in rehab where the injured person feels that he or she can do anything. Unfortunately, people re injure themselves if they do not listen to their trainers and or doctors. The professionals know how long particular injuries take to recover. The injured person usually does not know everything that is best for their recovery. In addition, I also connected with Brees in his story when he described his definition of faith. I truly realize how important faith is in my life. Brees obviously realizes this fact as well. Faith affects literally everything you can imagine in a person's life. Not only does faith control a person's actions, but faith also affects a person's thoughts. I am thankful to have a strong foundation of faith in my life. I am fortunate to have a strong background with my faith. Overall, I believe Brees and I can agree that our faith has positively impacted both of our lives. I look forward to finding out more about Brees and his story in the next sections of my reading.
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