Last season marked a third straight season without playoff football for the Saints, as the team struggled to return to the successes of the Sean Payton-Drew Brees era. Last year’s 9-8 record saw the team miss out on the NFC South title to Tampa Bay again, leading to more pressure on head coach Dennis Allen.
In this series, we’ll review a few positions on the Saints roster, discussing how they performed last time out, and how these units look going into 2024.
To start with, we’ll look at the most important position on the football field: Quarterback. In March 2023, the Saints splashed out on a $150 million, four-year deal on ex-Raiders quarterback Derek Carr. This came after two long seasons that saw six different quarterbacks wheeled out, a serious departure from the 15 seasons of stability and excellence with Drew Brees under center.
Derek Carr is no Drew Brees, but he did have a fairly good season last time out, ranking in the league’s top ten for passer rating and touchdowns and passing for 3,878 yards across his 17 starts.
Carr came in for some criticism throughout the early stages of the last campaign, and rightfully so. Most notably for an extremely disappointing 26-9 home loss against Tampa Bay and a tough loss in Atlanta, in which the Saints repeatedly failed to convert red zone trips into touchdowns and kicked five field goals in a 24-15 loss.
But there were bright spots, too, with possibly the best of the lot being in week 18 when the Saints finally clicked and blew the Falcons away 48-17. Carr threw four touchdowns to three different receivers, helping to finish an inconsistent season on a high note.
Performances like that have cemented Carr’s position as a starter for 2024, but behind him, there has been a considerable shakeup of the QB depth chart. Most notably, the Saints drafted a quarterback out of South Carolina in the 5th round of the draft – Spencer Rattler.
Rattler is an intriguing prospect out of college, having spent four full seasons as a starter, two at Oklahoma, and his final two as a South Carolina Gamecock. Rattler is about as experienced a quarterback as in the draft and has shown his ability to be a top quarterback in flashes during his time in college.
However, it would be fair to say that Rattler simply hasn’t lived up to many expectations for him coming out of high school, where he was generally regarded as one of the nation’s top quarterbacks. Whether he will fully unlock this potential is still unclear – with many believing that his 2023 season is as good as he’ll be – but the Saints have taken a flyer on him with the 150th -overall selection.
The fact that the 2024 draft saw six quarterbacks go in the top 12 picks and the 7th in the 5th round might suggest that this wasn’t the deepest class on record. Nonetheless, this seems like a decent, calculated gamble by the Saints, with many in the media already reporting that Rattler has looked impressive in practice.
Rattler has upside, and it will be interesting to see if he sees the field at any point across the eighteen weeks. At this point, however, he appears to be the backup quarterback following the departure of Jameis Winston in the offseason.
Winston was, at one time, the new savior of the Saints. Still, injuries and inconsistent performances encouraged the team to let him go in March, and he subsequently signed for the Browns, becoming the new backup to Deshaun Watson.
As a result, Rattler’s competition for the QB2 role will come from two men: Jake Haener and Nathan Peterman.
We’ll start with Haener, drafted in 2023, following three seasons as the starter at Fresno State – coincidentally, the same school that Derek Carr attended. Haener was only expected to be backup, but he made headlines for the wrong reasons following a failed drug test last September.
Haener denied doing this on purpose but did accept the ruling from the league, which has already given him a black mark against his record. But the Saints will be willing to forgive these off-the-field issues if he can majorly impact it.
Haener has yet to see the field in the NFL, but his college tape shows a capable quarterback who can read the field well and not panic under pressure. His TD-INT ratio of 53-12 is also impressive, showing good decision-making and an ability not to force the ball when not required.
Haener is in a good spot to challenge Rattler here, and if Carr is benched for whatever reason – injury or poor performance – both men look like decent options as backup quarterbacks with potentially high ceilings.
Nathan Peterman is also on the roster for the time being. Peterman is the outside shot here, having failed to take his previous chances in the league, with his brief spell as the Bills quarterback in 2017-18 being amongst the worst we’ve seen in the 21st century, with three touchdowns and 12 interceptions for a passer rating below 40. He would have been better off throwing an incompletion on every throw.
But Peterman has stuck around in the league, and the Saints are his 4th team, following spells at the Raiders and Bears, where he has barely seen the field. Don’t put any money on Peterman earning the backup gig or even the third-string gig, but he is still on the roster, aiming to keep his slim NFL dreams alive.
Going into this year, Carr is still the starter, but at 33, he’s on the older side, and it’s unclear what the team’s long-term strategy is at quarterback. The dream is that Carr has a career renaissance – especially after the firing of OC Pete Carmichael, replaced by former 49ers assistant Klint Kubiak.
The fact that the Saints have used mid-round picks on quarterbacks in two straight years suggests they are looking towards a succession plan, possibly when Carr’s current contract ends in 2026. However, if things go south for the team this year and Carr doesn’t perform, don’t be surprised to see that process pick up pace.
As a result, either (or both) of Rattler and Haener must be ready to step up at any point in Klint Kubiak’s new-look offense and show signs of being the New Orleans Saints quarterback of the future.
Show Your Support
Support the great work of the Saints on Sports View 360 by purchasing licensed NFL fan gear. Items ranged from Saints hats, jerseys, t-shirts, socks, and more. We would greatly appreciate it if you would buy these items from the text link listed below. The revenue generated from today’s offer goes into the funding of the Sports View 360. Click on the link below if you are interested.
New Orleans Saints Fan Gear Deals at Fanatics
