Can the Saints' offense find success with Tyler Shough starting as a rookie?

Saints quarterback Derek Carr announced his surprising but not shocking retirement from the NFL on Saturday. During offseason training, Carr discovered a throwing shoulder injury that would have required surgery, and he has now decided to step away from football at the age of 34.

The Saints are oddly well prepared for Carr's departure. They were already geared up to move on from him in 2026 for financial reasons and were already thinking about quarterbacks of the future this offseason. Carr's shoulder injury only accelerated the Saints' urgency in finding a young passer to step into his shoes. And with Carr's status still unclear during the NFL draft last month, the Saints selected Louisville quarterback Tyler Shough with the 40th pick.

Carr's retirement now paves the way for Shough to win the starting job, though coach Kellen Moore has called for an open competition between Shough, Spencer Rattler and Jake Haener for the spot. Neither Rattler nor Haener were drafted by this coaching staff, and neither were picked anywhere near as high as Shough. Plus, both have already had starting opportunities and didn't perform well enough to stave off the Shough selection. Without question, the rookie is in pole position -- if this is even a competition at all. Should Shough win the job, he'd be the first rookie quarterback selected outside of the first round to start his first career game since DeShone Kizer did it in 2017.

A seven-year collegiate player and four-year starter at Oregon, Texas Tech and Louisville, Shough was a member of the 2018 recruiting class and is, accordingly, 25 years old. By midseason of his rookie year, he'll be 26. He's two years older than Rattler and only a few months younger than Haener.

That Shough enters the league so much older than the average rookie implies some level of pro readiness, which is good news for a Saints team now in desperate need of a starter. However, because of Shough's extensive injuries, he had only 951 pass attempts in college. Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart had 1,307. Browns quarterback Shedeur Sanders had 907 in just two seasons with Colorado. Shough hasn't actually seen that much action despite his age.

But experience isn't the only form of pro readiness. While Shough hasn't taken as many snaps as you might expect of a 25-year-old, he has been through many installs and offseason programs; he has worked with a variety of receivers and systems. It's reasonable to expect more from Shough than an average rookie in terms of onboarding the playbook and getting command of the locker room. We can expect him to have more mature habits than a 21- or 22-year-old.

Shough's final stop in college was at Louisville, and coach Jeff Brohm's offense further rosies up his immediate projection as a Week 1 starter. Shough actually took some under-center dropbacks with the Cardinals (only 27, but relative to most college quarterbacks, that's quite a bit). Fewer than 10% of Shough's pass attempts were screens, one of the lowest rates in the country. And you can find NFL concepts on his film, like this deep play-action dropback with a high corner route on top of the crosser.

Tyler Shough throwing the high corner off play-action. Can't drop it in the bucket much better than that. pic.twitter.com/WwImNydpmd

This play is also an example of Shough's best trait: He has an impressive arm, especially on vertical throws. Shough is capable of dropping deep throws into challenging buckets, which is a nonnegotiable skill for starting NFL signal-callers and doubly valuable on a team with one of the league's preeminent deep threats in Rashid Shaheed. With good 6-foot-5 height and the ability to throw on the move, there's no pass that isn't accessible to Shough. That gives Moore a full menu of concepts to work with on offense.

Identifying exactly what sort of offense Moore would like to run is the challenging part. He has been an offensive coordinator for the past six seasons -- four in Dallas with Dak Prescott, one in Los Angeles with Justin Herbert and one in Philadelphia with Jalen Hurts. His offense evolved over time in Dallas, and then it changed to accommodate Herbert and Hurts, as well as the pass catchers and offensive lines available for him at each spot.

Take quarterback alignment, for instance: Moore lined his quarterback up under center more and more frequently across his time in Dallas, but then largely abandoned it with the Chargers and Eagles. Then there is his varied screen use. In his lone season with the Chargers, his screen rate spiked. Then it dropped back down in Philadelphia. There was one season in which he ran a remarkable amount of empty sets (2021 in Dallas), one season in which he was remarkably run-heavy (unsurprisingly, 2024 in Philadelphia) and one season in which he was heavily reliant on pre-snap motion (2023 in Los Angeles, though he has generally used more motion than the average coordinator).

What does Moore want to do in New Orleans, especially now that he's the head honcho and not just the offensive coordinator? He will adjust his offense to the tools available to him, but Shough has never taken an NFL snap. When the slate is almost completely blank, it's hard to adjust the scheme to the existing expectations.

Let's step away from the quarterback and look at the resources, then. With an excellent pass-catching back in Alvin Kamara, it's reasonable to think the Saints will be screen-heavy (and in general, a little more pass-heavy). A Kamara checkdown is as dangerous and valuable as any in the league. Save for the Eagles in 2024, who were predictably run-heavy, Moore's teams have generally skewed to dropping back.

But it might not make sense for the rest of the team. The Saints are lacking in size and tackle-breaking ability at receiver, but Shaheed and Chris Olave are two loose route runners who can win downfield. And the tight end room in New Orleans is quite deep, with Juwan Johnson (who just got a nice extension), Foster Moreau and Taysom Hill. We just saw the Saints have some success with a two-wide-receiver, two-tight-end offense last season, before Shaheed and Olave (and Carr and multiple interior offensive linemen) got hurt. I'd expect those multiple-tight-end sets to be a big part of the offense again.

It would be nice to rely on those deep play-action dropbacks with Olave and Shaheed screaming downfield, like the Saints did last season. But you need a threatening running game to build your passing menu out of the play-action pass. How the Saints choose to run the ball is a fascinating question. Moore has been in both zone-heavy and gap-heavy offenses, and he has operated with the QB both under center and in the gun. From Philadelphia, he brought run game coordinator T.J. Paganetti, a longtime Jeff Stoutland assistant. The Eagles run every concept under the sun. Shough has enough mobility to occasionally include himself in the QB run game, but he won't dominate touches the way Hurts does in Philadelphia.

The Saints' offensive line thrived on zone runs last season under offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, an extension of the Kyle Shanahan coaching tree. The Saints are expected to start two young tackles in second-year man Taliese Fuaga (expected to switch from the left side to the right side) and rookie first-rounder Kelvin Banks Jr. A heavy diet of runs and play-action passes would protect the green duo from as many true one-on-one pass sets as possible, which feels like a priority.

And, of course, Shough is a big part of the equation. It's hard to ask a rookie passer to run a pass-happy approach. If Moore wants to spread formations out, get five into the concept and move the ball in the quick game (as he largely did with Prescott in Dallas), he'd be putting extra helpings on Shough's plate. As discussed earlier, it's reasonable to expect Shough to be more pro ready than the average rookie quarterback -- but only to a point.

Shough is a fine quick-game thrower and appears to be a rhythm passer. He likes to tie concepts to the timing of his feet, and you can feel him get comfortable as he starts to string quick completions together. The concern is that Shough doesn't have the fastest feet -- he's a taller, longer QB -- and he isn't a particularly sudden or flexible thrower. When throws don't come out in rhythm, there can be big moments of accuracy drain, especially if pressure is involved.

Take this checkdown against Clemson. A smaller, bouncier quarterback would more easily reset his throwing platform or sidearm this throw in, but Shough's feet are heavy, and he isn't a particularly elastic thrower. This ball sails.

pic.twitter.com/n51DLHWV9f

Shough has good snaps as a processor and distributor, but he's not at the level of Prescott or Herbert there, and it will likely take him a couple of years to get there. How well he acclimates to NFL coverages and how quickly he operates against NFL throwing windows will define just how pass-happy Moore can get in New Orleans. In the short term, using Shough more as a moon-ball launcher behind a run-heavy philosophy -- a la Hurts in 2024 -- feels optimal.

In that Shough was a top-50 pick of the new coaching staff, the new system will likely be built with him in mind. But it is worth noting that Shough has one of the cardinal weaknesses that quickly lampoons rookie quarterbacks -- especially those forced into early action. He is extremely shaky around pressure.

Shough is a solid avoider of sacks but mainly because he has an extremely quick alarm system and bails early. Of the five quarterbacks taken in the first three rounds, Shough's 8.6% sack rate when pressured is nearly half that of the next best (Cam Ward at 14.5%). But escaping sacks is only the first part of making plays under pressure; NFL quarterbacks must be able to throw from pockets muddied by penetration, accelerate their throwing process to beat an incoming hit and make cool-headed decisions while under duress. Shough tends to fade away from hits, which dramatically impacts his accuracy, and will launch panic throws when he knows he's going down.

The good news is that Shough won't let hits accumulate, because he's so willing to throw the ball up to avoid a sack. The quickest way to ruin a rookie quarterback is to break him with contact. The bad news is that no matter what sort of offense Moore runs for him, Shough might put a hard cap on the ceiling of that offense if he's only able to make big plays when his pocket is perfectly protected.

In Rattler's six starts last season, there was plenty of worrying stuff -- 22 sacks and five interceptions -- but he was willing to extend plays and create explosive gains when pressured. If a calmer and more accurate Rattler shows up to training camp this year, the 2024 fifth-rounder will push Shough for the starting job early. He has a more impressive arm and better movement skills.

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Tyler Shough's NFL draft profile

Check out Louisville QB Tyler Shough's NFL draft résumé.

Expectations should always be tempered for a second-round rookie quarterback, especially on a team like the Saints that doesn't have elite offensive personnel. But it's doubly tough to prognosticate how well Shough will play because we can't really predict what Moore will do with this offense schematically. While Moore has long adjusted his offense for the veteran quarterbacks he has inherited, there's also a chance he runs his ideal offense and requires the rookie QB to adjust his game to it.

Shough does plenty well as a pocket passer and processor, so if the scheme is sound and the receivers are winning, this Saints operation has a chance of being much more functional than one might expect. But it also has a chance of being a disaster.

There aren't many offenses with a wider range of outcomes than New Orleans, where the new coach and new quarterback hold all the cards.