A Source Close to Drew Brees is Not Doing Him Any Favors [UPDATE]

Drew Brees went from sounding a lot like the president to rebutting his old arguments in a 40-hour span. It was a remarkable about-face emblematic of the larger moment happening right now which feels like a collective awakening of conscience.

In his Football Morning in America column today, Peter King lays out the tick-tock in great detail. It's quite a read and replete with plenty of behind-the-scenes nuggets. Among them is this, driven by source close to Brees:

"3:35 p.m. Today’s sports culture is interesting. Instead of reaching out to Brees and saying, Hey, that’s insulting to us, teammates and foes alike jeered Brees on social media—first wideout Michael Thomas, then safety Malcolm Jenkins, finally LeBron James. Brees got flash-bombed everywhere. “Sometimes you need to shut the f— up,” said teammate and Players Coalition leader Malcolm Jenkins in an Instagram post he later deleted. As one person close to Brees told me, the social-media rip jobs reminded him of “Lord of the Flies.” In that book, normal British boys get stranded on a desert island and have to fend for themselves, and they spiral into savagery to survive. Sounds about right."

Now, it's been almost 20 years since l last read Lord of the Flies for high school English class, but this analogy doesn't feel all that accurate. In one circumstance you had a total breakdown of social contract that led to internal violence. In the other you saw people correctly point out a bad personal opinion on Twitter. One is actual savagery, the other is asking for equality.

The person responsible for feeding this information to King had to think they were helping Brees.

They weren't. One would think the quarterback wouldn't need to stick his finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. One would think he'd grasp that his best course of action would be to take some actions to back up his eventual bold words.

Perhaps this source should get some updated talking points after veering dangerously close to eating the trash here.

UPDATE: Several hours after King's column was published, he tweeted out the following apology and noted the reference has been taken out.