Ahead of the 2026 season, the New Orleans Saints had a core goal for their upcoming slate of games. That goal was to compete. Through two games, the Saints have proven to everyone that they’re ready to do exactly what they’d hoped.
“We don’t want to just win the division,” Saints general manager Mickey Loomis said. “We don’t want to be an 8-9 winning team in the division. We want to win the division, be dominant, and have a chance to make a run in the playoffs.”
Loomis made it clear at the end of the 2025 season that this was the vision for New Orleans going intoan offseason that was clearly focused on building around its quarterback, Tyler Shough.
Shough has already made the Saints’ decision to draft him a solid one. He finished 2025 as the Offensive Rookie of the Year runner-up, the NFL’s best third-down passer as a starter and one of the league’s best end-of-game quarterbacks.
Now, he’s started the 2026 season as the most resilient and productive signal caller in the NFL. With Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football left to play, Shough leads the league in passing yards with 662.
Despite imperfect play, slow starts and the lack of a run game, the Saints walked out of Baltimore in Week 2 having shocked the Ravens on the way to a 24-17 victory. A win stands to build the confidence of a 1-1 team that was once down 21-0 in Week 1 and 14-3 in Week 2.
Now, with a favorable, though not as easy as expected schedule ahead of them, the Saints have proven that they, with Shough, their defense, wide receiver Chris Olave and a host of impactful contributors, they can beat anyone.
“We feel like we’re never out of it,” Shough said after the win in Baltimore. “We’ve just got to find ways to keep growing throughout the rest of the season, to shore those things up and there’s always going to be little things. (The Ravens are) a really good football team and it shows us that we believe in ourselves even more. We’re ready to keep going.
The Ravens are a bona fide Super Bowl contender with All-World talent in quarterback Lamar Jackson and running back Derrick Henry. Despite that and an early deficit, the Saints left Baltimore with a win that very few expected.
That statement victory is enough to put them on the map, one that can be a dangerous team throughout the 2026 season and stands to compete for its division, which New Orleans has not claimed since the 2020 season.
With Shough at the helm, the Saints have proven that they can compete after knocking off one the league’s top teams. Now, if they can put together their run game and start games faster, they can quickly become a powerhouse in the division, the conference and the league.
