What the Addition of Another QB Means for the Saints
Within less than a month, the New Orleans Saints have had significant changes to their lineup of quarterbacks. It began with using their turn during the NFL Draft to acquire 25-year-old Tyler Shough, who recently finished his college football career at Louisville. Less than a week later, Ben DiNucci was cut after only two months on the team. About two weeks later, after being the main topic of discussion for the Saints, QB Derek Carr announced his retirement from the NFL due to his uncertainty of being healed up by September from the Week 14 season-ending injuries he had suffered. Following these events, the list for that important position now consisted of two other players, 24-year-old Spencer Rattler and 26-year-old Jack Haener, who are the team’s current backup quarterbacks carried over from the previous season. Then, earlier this week, the Saints announced that 23-year-old Hunter Dekkers had been signed as an undrafted free agent for the upcoming season after he was seen trying out in the recent weekend’s rookie minicamp.
Saints fans are obviously taken aback by the number of alterations within a short amount of time, far more being done than in the entire off-season. While there was a lot of uncertainty about the team’s future following another failure to make it to the NFL Playoffs, these drastic changes have resulted in a lot more questions about the decisions made by the coaching staff and management. Analysts have only the college stats of the three recently-acquired players on which to make their best educated guesses as to how they will perform. Every one of their actions on the field in the three preseason games will be counted, charted, and analyzed as if it were an official game. There will be debates in sports bars and in online forums leading up to September 7th, when they host the Cardinals in the Caesars Superdome.
When you look at the team’s difficulties following the end of the 2021 season, the lack of a long-term plan for a QB is at the top of the list. Filling the position with whomever they could sign for one season obviously wasn’t the solution. Spending millions of dollars for an established player didn’t yield the returns they expected and hoped for, although it did make sense on paper. Now that they are attempting something different by exchanging experience for youth, there’s the potential for this squad of quarterbacks to be on the team for several seasons. This concept has proven successful for players such as Taysom Hill, especially if these men are able to play different interchangeable offensive positions. Not only does this create a reliable source of knowledgeable and well-trained replacements, but it also keeps the opposing defense guessing as to what that player will do when the ball is snapped. The Saints have often proven that the outcome of the game can be determined by a maneuver from the least-suspecting player on the field. Since the coaching of Sean Payton, they have known that strategy, not necessarily an athlete’s abilities, wins the game.
