Saints WR Emmanuel Sanders says Drew Brees cried HARD during his apology to the team in the wake of his controversial anthem comments ... and now, Sanders says N.O. players have moved on.
The 33-year-old revealed on ESPN's "First Take" on Wednesday that he was initially pissed back in June when Brees said anthem kneelers were "disrespecting the flag."
Highlight: @readdanwrite asks @drewbrees what the star NFL quarterback thinks about "players kneeling again when the NFL season starts."@drewbrees: “I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country.”
— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) June 3, 2020
Full exchange: pic.twitter.com/MpCkFyOMed
But, Sanders claims the Saints had a team meeting over it all shortly after the QB's comments ... and he says Brees apologized vehemently through a mountain of tears.
"As he talked, the more and more he talked, you just see a guy with just tears rolling down his face," Sanders said.
"I mean, I've never seen that. You could just tell that he was hurt by his comments and the things that people were saying about him because he was unaware of it."
Emmanuel added, "I mean just tears flowing down his face."
Sanders says after that team conversation ... Saints players knew that Brees understood his mistake -- and have since moved on.
"We understood where he was coming from and we were able to move past it," Sanders says. "I don't see any weird energy going on in the locker room."
Sanders -- who signed with the Saints just a few weeks prior to Brees' comments -- added he's since come to know Drew as "one of the best teammates I've been around."