When the New Orleans Saints selected Tyler Shough with the 40th overall pick, the doubters were loud. Many viewed the move as a reach with prospects like Shedeur Sanders and Jalen Milroe still on the board. But the 26-year-old rookie never let the noise get to him.<\/p>\n
Once he was given the reins as the starter, Shough quickly flipped the narrative and put the football world on notice, emerging as one of the league\u2019s most exciting young signal callers. Now an AP Offensive Rookie of the Year finalist, Shough continues to turn heads\u2014most recently earning high praise from former Carolina Panthers quarterback Jake Delhomme, who led the franchise to its first Super Bowl appearance during the 2003 NFL season.<\/p>\n
Delhomme joined Arizona Cardinals insider Kyle Odegard<\/a> for an exclusive interview with CasinoBeats<\/a>, and here\u2019s what he had to say about Shough\u2019s rookie campaign.<\/p>\n After watching Shough play live twice, Delhomme said he was \u201cvery impressed\u201d with the rookie and called the selection a \u201cbrilliant move\u201d by head coach Kellen Moore and the Saints front office. He added that Shough \u201cprobably could have started\u201d from the jump, but understood why Moore and the staff chose to let him develop with the scout team to open the season.<\/p>\n Delhomme said the Saints handled Shough\u2019s rookie season perfectly:<\/p>\n \u201cHe played the preseason, and then let him sit and watch. Let him digest the season and how things go. Preseason is one thing. The regular season is very different. Preseason, you\u2019re installing a playbook. So each day you\u2019re building, building, building. Then once the season starts, it\u2019s game-plan week. It\u2019s game-plan specific. What is Kellen Moore like during the course of the season? And I think for a young kid to truly understand, this is not college, where you have some penciled-in wins along the way. That just doesn\u2019t exist in the NFL. And so I thought they were brilliant in the way they handled him. They let him sit.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked what he saw from Shough against the Panthers and down the stretch of the season, this is what Delhomme had to say:<\/p>\n \u201cI thought the kid played well. He played well in Charlotte against us. We had him for a couple of sacks. He broke through those sacks and stepped up in the pocket, made big plays to Juwan Johnson. And then to Chris Olave. They got a win. And you saw them give him more and more as the season went on. Very big. Big kid, strong kid, strong arm. Ball comes out of his hand… Give them credit. I liked what I saw from them, and I think everyone in New Orleans is pretty excited. It\u2019s funny, he\u2019s going into year two, and he\u2019s two years older than Bryce Young, who\u2019s going into year four.\u201d<\/p>\n Lastly, Delhomme credits some of Shough\u2019s early maturity not only to his age and experience, but also to his college head coach, Jeff Brohm, a former NFL quarterback. Delhomme believes Shough\u2019s development is far from finished and thinks the Who Dat Nation has every reason to be excited about the future:<\/p>\n \u201cSo big, strong, mature kid, coached very well in college. Especially his last year, playing for Jeff Brohm at Louisville. I love Jeff. Jeff\u2019s maybe a little older than me, played in the NFL, but they develop quarterbacks. Footwork-wise. And so there\u2019s a pretty good understanding when those kids get to the league playing for him. So, yeah, I think the ceiling\u2019s pretty darn high for Shough. And I know people in New Orleans are pretty excited about it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the New Orleans Saints selected Tyler Shough with the 40th overall pick, the doubters were loud. Many…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2076],"tags":[7,896,55,402,401,2588,2572,2571,6,397],"class_list":{"0":"post-714300","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-saints","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-new-orleans","10":"tag-new-orleans-saints","11":"tag-new-orleans-saints-draft","12":"tag-new-orleans-saints-news","13":"tag-new-orleans-saints-roster","14":"tag-neworleans","15":"tag-neworleanssaints","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-saints"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115979217107382922","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}