What Tyler Shough Must Prove to Start Year One
04/29/2025
By Ross Jackson
A lot of the conversation around New Orleans Saints second-round pick and quarterback Tyler Shough often gravitates around his age and injury history.
Shough will turn 26-years-old soon after the season begins, and he has three season-ending injuries in his collegiate career. His 2021 and 2022 seasons came to an end with broken collarbones, and his 2023 year was shortened with a broken fibula.
The Saints, though, don’t see any issue with his age and have been comfortable with his medicals as general manager Mickey Loomis highlighted during his post-draft press conference.
“It’s a broken leg, right? So that’s going to heal,” Loomis said. “There’s not really a greater risk of that recurring. (Same with) the shoulder and collarbone. So that’s different maybe than a knee or a labrum tear or something.There’s things that you have some ongoing concerns about, and then there’s other injuries that you have lesser concern about.”
If the injuries and the age are of no concern to New Orleans, then Shough should be a shoo-in to be the immediate starting quarterback in 2025, if Derek Carr can’t go, right?
Not exactly.
Shough is very likely to be the guy sooner rather than later. In fact, we feel at Louisianasports.Net that the percentage chance is much closer to 100% than even 90%. However, the rookie passer will have to make a big improvement in a very important area of his game in order to truly seal the expectation that he will be the starter moving forward: under pressure passing.
Poise Under Pressure
Shough infamously has some ugly stuff on tape when under pressure.
I have literally never seen anything like this insane play from Tyler Shough.
Even Will Levis thinks this is bananas. pic.twitter.com/FcR7iae93k
— Sam Monson (@SamMonsonNFL) March 27, 2025
But more important than just one play that’s made its rounds on social media are the numbers, which back up that Shough has had some trouble when facing pressure.
Per Pro Football Focus, Shough had a 115.9 passer rating when kept clean in 2024 as the quarterback at Louisville. That rating plummeted to 68.9, a 47-point freefall, when under pressure.
Completion percentages tell a similar story. He completed 71.3% of his passes when kept clean in 2024 compared to 42.3% when under pressure. That’s a 29% plunge.
He will have to find better poise under pressure in order to solidify not just the job of starting quarterback, but the success he might be able to find at the position.
He has a lot of other key attributes for successful quarterback play. He’s excellent at the line of scrimmage before the snap, confident in his throwing ability, has the arm to get the ball anywhere on the field, has NFL size and has a mobility that goes often unrecognized in conversations around his skill set. He works well in phase and out and is great when working on time and in rhythm while still possessing the requisite traits to extend plays. He also has experience running the play action and RPO game.
How to Help Shough
Managing pressure will have to see a step forward, which isn’t all up to him. Head coach Kellen Moore and his offense can help there as well. Drafting a first-round offensive lineman in Kelvin Banks Jr. sure is a great start, but finding a big-bodied and reliable receiving weapon should be next on the list. A veteran wideout like Keenan Allen could be an excellent addition to help make Shough’s job a little easier.
Reducing the amount of times that the rookie is under pressure may be Moore’s best move. None of his former quarterbacks, Dak Prescott, Justin Herbert nor Jalen Hurts, saw significant progress when Moore took over their play-calling in this area. However, they each saw fewer dropbacks under pressure in Moore’s first year than the year before.
Getting the ball out quickly and fortifying the trenches may be exactly what Shough needs to really see progress in this area. And Moore already looks to have gone to work on exactly that, big-bodied receiver pending.