Canal Street Chronicles
Throughout the 2025 NFL season, SB Nation’s Doug Farrar will write about the game’s Secret Superstars — those players whose performances might slip under the radar for whatever reasons. In this installment, we focus on New Orleans Saints rookie quarterback Tyler Shough, who may have shown enough to help the franchise solve a quarterback problem that’s been evident since Drew Brees hung up his cleats.
Coming into the 2025 season, the New Orleans Saints were on a very short list of the teams dealing with the NFL’s worst/most undefined quarterback situations. Derek Carr’s medical retirement in May left the Saints with two realistic options — second-year fifth-round pick Spencer Rattler, and 2025 second-round pick Tyler Shough out of Louisville. Neither seemed tremendously exciting on the surface, and the general national thought was that without some kind of established veteran added to the roster, the Saints were basically punting on the 2025 season, and giving new head coach Kellen Moore precious little at the game’s most important position.
Rattler started the first eight games of the season, and while he had his moments (the Week 2 performance against the 49ers was a very pleasant surprise), the offense wasn’t humming, the wins weren’t happening, and Moore pulled Rattler in favor of Shough in the Saints’ 23-3 Week 8 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This after Rattler was responsible for four turnovers in the 26-14 Week 7 loss to the Chicago Bears told you that Moore wasn’t making his decision off of one bad game.
“Tyler’s starting, so we’re not looking back on that,” Moore said on October 29. “Obviously, the goal is to let Tyler play and get going, and Spencer knows that his role is to be the backup, and he’s supposed to help Tyler in any possible way. He did an excellent job today running the scout team.”
Ouch. “He did an excellent job today running the scout team” is about as much as you can get away with damning a quarterback with faint praise, but there it was.
Not that Shough was any sort of immediate franchise savior. In relief of Rattler against the Bucs, he completed 17 of 30 passes for 170 yards, one touchdown, one interception, and a passer rating of 53.2. Shough’s first NFL start came against the Los Angeles Rams and their vicious defense in Week 9, so you’d want to give the rookie credit for simply surviving that. It was a 34-10 loss for the then 1-8 Saints, and Shough completed just 15 of 24 passes for 174 yards, one touchdown, one interception, and a passer rating of 81.3, but he did put together some big-time throws against a defense that has put quite a few quarterbacks in the blender this season.
In reviewing the Rams tape for this article, Shough’s pocket movement showed up as a positive more than once, and that’s a very good thing… because this isn’t a guy who’s going to wow you with second-reaction stuff outside the pocket....
