re: Brees expected to ask for less than Garoppolo

to be fair the report also says he expects to ask for less than his last deal.

and it was speculated he might have had enough leverage to ask for more than that if he chose to.

The way these things work is that the latest franchise qb to sign a deal also typically becomes the highest paid player in league history. It's just the way that steadily increasing salary caps and salary inflation makes it work. If he wanted he could push for a contract like Garrapolo. That's probably around his market value. If he takes less then it's because he wants to give a discount to try to push for a Super Bowl in his last years, and you could argue that he already did that on his last contract.