ESPN analyst Seth Walder believes the public — and even NFL teams — evaluate quarterbacks in a misleading way.
The objective, he said over the phone a few months ago, isn’t to make a painstaking evaluation of every aspect of your young quarterback. It’s just to determine whether he’s good at his job.
The opinion runs counter to those who stress that patience is required to develop the position, that quarterbacks need time on task to see what they can blossom into.
“I think fans and teams are actually too slow to move on from a quarterback,” Walder said.
Walder’s point may be debatable, but his stance holds relevance for the New Orleans Saints as they turn to rookie Tyler Shough for his first career start.
At 1-7, the Saints have handed the keys over to their second-round prospect, who gets effectively nine games to show whether he’s a franchise quarterback — beginning Sunday on the road against the Los Angeles Rams.
Fair or not, every performance from Shough is about to be scrutinized. He might not be expected to rally the Saints from the bottom of the standings, but the 26-year-old is expected to demonstrate enough encouraging signs that he’s worth building around for the long haul.
But what are those signs? That’ll be the tricky part of the Saints’ evaluation, particularly as the schedule gets softer once the black and gold get past the 5-2 Rams’ vaunted defense.
If the season were to end today, the Saints would have the No. 1 pick — their choice of any quarterback in the draft.
First, they must determine if they have enough in Shough to make taking another quarterback unnecessary.
“I’m excited for him,” Saints coach Kellen Moore said. “I think he’s going to handle this thing really, really well.”
Moore, as expected, made no bold declarations about Shough’s future, outside of saying that the rookie would start over Spencer Rattler for the rest of the season.
But asked about what he needs from a franchise quarterback, the first-year coach rattled off a list of traits. Great command. Avoid turnovers. Protect the football. Make plays when you have to. Lead.
The hope now for the Saints is that Shough is ready to step in and pounce after sitting for most of the first eight games. The Louisville product got his first extended action in last week’s loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and coaches and players said they could see the quarterback’s growth from running the scout team.
“I’m going to make mistakes,” Shough said. “So I’m going to do everything I can to learn from those mistakes.”
The worst outcome for the Saints would be if Shough manages to win games — without performances that definitively answer whether he’s The Guy.
Victories over the Miami Dolphins, New York Jets and Tennessee Titans — who are right near the Saints at the top of the draft order — have the potential to be misleading, especially if the Saints win with Shough just doing enough while the team steps up in other areas.
Yes, those wins could push the Saints out of the range to take the top quarterback prospect, but that shouldn’t eliminate the possibility of taking, say, the third quarterback off the board if they end up with the sixth pick instead of the first or second.
Look at the 2020 draft, for instance. That year, the Washington Commanders — or the Washington Football Team, as they were called then — passed on a chance to take Tua Tagovailoa or Justin Herbert and drafted defensive end Chase Young second overall instead.
Washington, at the time, felt it would be better off selecting a pass rusher labeled as a generational talent, since the team had also drafted quarterback Dwayne Haskins in the first round the previous year.
This decision might have doomed coach Ron Rivera’s four-year tenure in D.C. Haskins was benched — and then cut — that fall. And while Washington did make the playoffs in 2020 with a 7-9 record, the lack of a true franchise quarterback was the hurdle that Rivera and his staff could not overcome.
Washington may have been mistakenly persuaded by Haskins’ close to the 2019 season. Like Shough, Haskins’ first start didn’t come until Week 9. But his two victories down the stretch came against bad teams: The Detroit Lions, who finished 3-12-1, and a 5-11 Carolina Panthers team that lost eight straight to close the year. Haskins did show some flashes in that span — including the impressive arm strength that led him to be taken in Round 1 — but there were warning signs the team ended up overlooking.
There are other examples, too. The Denver Broncos famously drafted pass rusher Bradley Chubb over future MVP Josh Allen with the fifth pick in 2018, choosing to sign veteran Case Keenum rather than rely on a young signal caller.
The Cleveland Browns also traded out of the picks that became Carson Wentz and Deshaun Watson, although that was more centered on the franchise’s multi-year teardown strategy rather than preserving hope that another quarterback would pan out.
Complicating matters for the Saints, the 2026 draft does not appear to be the star-studded class it seemed before the season began.
Texas’ Arch Manning and LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier were originally seen as the prizes for rebuilding clubs like the Saints, but both have underwhelmed in spectacular fashion. In their place, Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza and Oregon’s Dante Moore have played well enough to top most mock drafts, but neither has generated the kind of hype that they would be franchise saviors.
Alabama’s Ty Simpson and South Carolina’s LaNorris Sellers — if they declare — also figure to be right in the first-round mix, which could suit the Saints well if they don’t have a top two pick and still want to take a quarterback.
“At this point in time, I would say there’s some good,” NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah said about this year’s quarterback class on the “Rich Eisen Show” this week. “I don’t necessarily think I’ve seen some great.”
So what does Shough have to show? Asked this question before the season, The Athletic’s Robert Mays compared the situation to New England and Drake Maye, the third overall pick in last year’s draft.
Like the Saints, the Patriots sat Maye until he was ready. The rookie then thrived, even with poor pass protection up front and a lackluster pass-catching group.
“The numbers weren’t good for Drake Maye last year, but the numbers were way better than they should have been,” Mays said. “If you look at the underlying metrics for the Patriots last year, it was way better than it had any right to be, considering some of the personnel deficiencies that team had.”
Then again, asking a quarterback who went 40th overall to play like a highly regarded quarterback from what looks like an all-time great draft class may be setting the bar too high. Perhaps the more apt comparison would be what Davis Mills showed for the Houston Texans as a third-rounder in 2021.
The Stanford product kept the Texans in enough games down the stretch to prevent Houston from reaching for a quarterback in a weak draft class.
Even then, though, Mills wasn’t the long-term answer: He was replaced in 2023 when the Texans drafted C.J. Stroud with the second overall pick.
At a lectern in the Saints’ facility on Wednesday, Shough seemed to understand the gravity of the situation. But his ultimate goal, he said, was to win.
He knows what’s on the line. He plays in a league where the Arizona Cardinals discarded Josh Rosen just a year after taking him 10th overall to draft Kyler Murray first overall. Justin Fields only got three seasons in Chicago before the Bears took Caleb Williams with the first pick.
“If it doesn’t go well this year, (and) they have an earlier first-round pick, one of those top quarterbacks is available to them, then yeah — I would absolutely not even hesitate to make a move,” Walder said.