The Saints are moving forward with Tyler Shough as their QB1 for 2026.
Shough, picked in the second round of the 2025 draft, stepped in for Spencer Rattler last November and put together a solid 5-4 record as starter. He connected on 67.6% of his throws for 2,384 yards with 10 TDs through the air, added three scores on the ground, and was picked off six times.
The young signal-caller turned heads during a four-game winning streak late in the season, generating some Offensive Rookie of the Year buzz. His performance clearly won over head coach Kellen Moore.
“We feel great with Tyler,” Moore told reporters Wednesday when asked about the team’s comfort level moving forward. “He’s done an awesome job through this entire process. He’s gotten a ton better. He’s taking advantage of a bunch of opportunities.”
Moore’s excited about having a full offseason to build around his young quarterback.
The Saints drafted Shough, 26, during a period when former starter Derek Carr’s future was up in the air. Carr had informed the team before the draft about a significant shoulder injury that might impact his 2025 campaign – then announced his retirement just two weeks after New Orleans made their draft selections.
That sudden shift caught the front office off guard.
“I would say that it just catches you a little bit off guard,” admitted GM Mickey Loomis. “And so you got to kind of recalibrate… It just changes your course a little bit.”
Rattler initially beat out Shough in training camp for the starting job. But after dropping six of their first seven games, the Saints made the permanent switch.
Loomis confirmed they had high marks on Shough during the draft process, though they weren’t planning to fast-track his development.
“I probably am overly patient. Sometimes your greatest strengths become a weakness, and so I’m really patient, I feel like, and whether it helps or not, hopefully it does,” Loomis explained. “I think it does, but I’ll continue to be that way.”
While the organization is clearly excited about their young QB, Loomis is tempering expectations.
“We have to remember that he hasn’t had 17 starts yet,” the GM cautioned.
“We’re going to go into next season with these high expectations and there’s nothing wrong with that. But we also have to temper that by the fact that… he’s a second-year quarterback and he’s had less than a full season to start. So we’ve got to keep that in mind as we go forward. There are building blocks here and we cannot skip any steps.”