When the New Orleans Saints made the decision to remove Spencer Rattler from the starting lineup midway through the 2025 season, there was a sizable contingent of people who questioned whether the team was making the right call because of the promise Rattler showed.
Now, the question is entirely different: Should the Saints consider shopping Rattler around the league? Or should they hang onto him and develop him as a backup to Tyler Shough, who seized the job after taking over for Rattler in Week 9?
The answer may depend on whether other teams approach the Saints with an offer they can’t turn down.
New Orleans selected Rattler in the fifth round of the 2024 NFL Draft out of South Carolina, and unlike most fifth-round picks, he has played a lot of football in the first two years of his career.
Guiding an injury-riddled offense that was mostly filled with backups, Rattler struggled while playing in seven games (six starts) as a rookie. But though he compiled a 70.4 passer rating and took 22 sacks, Rattler showed flashes of ability throughout his time in the lineup.
After Derek Carr’s retirement in 2025, Rattler beat out Shough for the starting job out of training camp and showed why early in the season: He was playing decisive football within the offense’s parameters, for the most part avoiding the negative plays that plagued him throughout his rookie season. While wins did not come, Rattler kept the Saints competitive in games against some of the NFL’s premier teams.
Rattler’s rate statistics all improved from Year 1 to Year 2, including touchdown percentage (1.3% increase), interception percentage (0.3% decrease), passing success rate (8.5% increase), sack percentage (2.25% decrease) and passer rating (16.1-point increase).
Wide receiver Chris Olave saw enough to believe Rattler is a starting-caliber quarterback — something he made sure to bring up upon the conclusion of the 2025 season.
“Spencer’s a great quarterback — I don’t believe he’s a backup quarterback in this league,” Olave said. “In this world nowadays, everybody wants to point the finger if something is going wrong. I feel like Spencer’s done a great job when he was back there starting at quarterback. He deserves another opportunity to be able to be a starting quarterback in this league.
“I don’t feel like there’s 32 quarterbacks better than him.”
Still, Shough clearly established himself as an improvement over Rattler in 2025, removing any doubt about a quarterback competition going into 2026. So: Should the Saints try to cash in while Rattler’s stock is high, or hang onto him because they (perhaps better than most teams) understand the value of a capable backup quarterback?
Quarterbacks are valuable trade chips, and that is true for basically anyone who has a shred of upside at the position.
Consider three players: Sam Howell, Kenny Pickett and Joe Milton.
Howell, a fifth-round pick in the 2022 draft who threw 21 interceptions in his lone season as a starter, has now been traded three times — all as part of a pick swap that improved the draft positioning for the team that had previously held his rights.
Pickett, a former first-round pick who never lived up to his draft status, also has been traded three times. In fact, both Howell and Pickett were traded for draft considerations twice in the span of five months last year.
Milton, who was selected a round later than Rattler in the 2024 draft, was traded to the Cowboys in exchange for a fifth-round pick this past summer despite playing in only one NFL game as a rookie.
All of those players were traded to be backups elsewhere. If a team saw enough in Rattler to consider letting him compete for a starting job, much the same way he did last year, it would be reasonable to expect a fourth-round pick or better in return — which would be an improvement on the Saints’ initial investment in Rattler.
But that would require another team to not only be interested, but also willing to part with an asset that could help speed along the development of the young quarterback it is acquiring. And the Saints may not want to be the one to initiate trade talks.
While Rattler does have some value as a potential trade chip, he also costs the Saints pennies against the dollar — he will count $1.2 million against the team’s 2026 salary cap and $1.3 million in 2027 — while providing a strong depth option at the most important position on the field. He also knows coach Kellen Moore’s system.
It would be hard to blame New Orleans for considering that more valuable than an early Day 3 pick.