"Other teams may not have had an off-season, but in my mind we had an off-season," the New Orleans quarterback said. "Because we were together. Guys left that program in shape, focused, football-ready, and that made me feel good about where we would be coming into camp."
So in a sense, was the lockout actually an advantage for the Saints?
"Only time will tell," Brees said. "But the way we approached it, yes. That was the point. What we did, I hoped would prepare us to be ahead of everyone else."
There's no quibbling with the way both Rodgers and Brees have rocketed into the stratosphere of the league's best quarterbacks and put themselves on a Canton trajectory.
Rodgers threw for 304 yards and three touchdowns against Pittsburgh in Super Bowl XLV, earning most-valuable-player honors for that game, and putting the finishing touches on an up-from-the-rubble season for a Packers team that had 15 players on injured reserve.
