Westlake High School graduate Drew Brees will become the second Austin native to join the Pro Football Hall of Fame after being announced Thursday as a member of the 2026 class. He’ll be inducted in July.
Brees, who led the New Orleans Saints to their only Super Bowl win after the 2009 season, retired after the 2020 season as a 13-time Pro Bowl selection. He led the league in passing seven times, had a record five 5,000-yard passing seasons and his 80,538 passing yards were an NFL record when he retired. He now ranks second all-time in passing yards after Tom Brady broke the record in 2021.
Undefeated as a high school quarterback at Westlake, Brees led the Chaps to the first of their four state championships in 1996. He played collegiately at Purdue after in-state powers such as Texas and Texas A&M passed on a player listed at just 6 feet tall and coming off a serious high school knee injury. Last October, Brees returned to Westlake for a jersey-retirement ceremony.
Widely considered one of the top defensive players in the game’s history, the 6-foot-2, 200-pound Lane starred on both sides of the ball for a powerhouse team from old Anderson that played for one state title in the mid-1940s in the Prairie View Interscholastic League, the league for the state’s Black schools in the segregation era. His decorated 14-year NFL career included an NFL-record 14 interceptions in a 12-game season as a rookie in 1952 and seven first-team, all-NFL selections.
Lane and Brees ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, on the American-Statesman’s list of top 100 football players from the Austin area released in 2020.