Since Drew Brees walked away in the 2021 offseason, the Saints have cycled through nine different starting quarterbacks. That kind of turnover invites a ranking, and when you lay out the last five years in New Orleans, the list tells the story pretty clearly: a few flashes, a few functional stretches, and plenty of pain.
At the bottom sits Ian Book, whose lone start came in Week 16 of the 2021 season against the Miami Dolphins on Thursday Night Football. It turned into a 20-3 loss in the Superdome, and Book’s Saints line ended at 0-1 as a starter with 135 passing yards and 2 interceptions, including a pick six on the opening offensive drive of the game.
Jake Haener lands just ahead of him after his only start, a Week 15 game against the Washington Commanders in 2024. He was benched at halftime for Spencer Rattler, and while Rattler helped push the Saints to the edge of a comeback, New Orleans still fell short when Jayden Daniels made one too many plays.
Haener finished with 49 yards and a pick.
Taysom Hill comes next, and that placement says more about the quarterback role than it does about Hill’s place in Saints lore. He’s a Saints legend, but not a great starting quarterback.
Even so, he went 3-1 as a starter, throwing for 815 yards, 3 touchdowns, and 4 interceptions while completing 55% of his passes. The signature moment was the 9-0 win over Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 15 of 2021, a game the defense owned from start to finish.
Hill can still say he is 1-0 against Tom Brady as a starting quarterback.
Trevor Siemian gets the next spot after stepping in for the injured Jameis Winston during the 2021 season. He relieved Winston in the Week 8 game against the Buccaneers, and the Saints still won to move to 5-2.
But the run didn’t hold. Siemian went 0-4 as a starter after that, and the season fell apart around him.
Over that stretch, he threw for 995 yards with a 10-to-3 touchdown-to-interception ratio.
Spencer Rattler’s ranking is a little more complicated. He went 1-13 as a Saints starter across the 2024 and 2025 seasons, and that record is hard to ignore.
Still, the performance never looked as bleak as the number next to it. In 14 starts, he threw for 2,768 yards, 11 touchdowns, and 10 interceptions while completing 63.5% of his passes.
He also made some big-time plays in difficult circumstances, and he remains on the roster going into 2026. The hat game apparently helped, too.
Andy Dalton lands in the middle of the pack after taking the reins in 14 games during the 2022 season. The year was supposed to belong to Jameis Winston, but Dennis Allen had other plans.
Dalton went 6-8 and posted 2,871 passing yards, 18 touchdowns, and 9 interceptions on 66.7% completion. For a rough season, he gave the Saints steady veteran play at the position.
Derek Carr’s Saints run is hard to separate from how it felt. The numbers were solid enough: 14-13 as a starter, 6,023 passing yards, 40 touchdowns, and 13 interceptions on 68.2% completion.
But the 2023 and 2024 stretch never really clicked, and the $150 million contract hung over everything. Carr retired early, and while there’s no personal issue there, this was an era plenty of Saints fans would rather leave behind.
Jameis Winston checks in at No. 2, and the case is easy to make. He was one of the most entertaining players in the league, and in 2021 he was playing the best football of his career under Sean Payton.
Known for turnovers, Winston somehow put together a 14-to-3 TD/INT ratio and helped the Saints jump to a 5-2 start before the injury changed everything. He finished his New Orleans stint with a fake kneel to give Jamaal Williams a touchdown on the final play of the 2023 season, while also running up the score on that team in Atlanta.
Winston went 6-4 as the Saints starter with 2,028 passing yards, 18 touchdowns, and 8 interceptions on 61.1% completion.
At No. 1 is Tyler Shough, and yes, that’s very premature. But the bar in the post-Brees era is low, and Shough gets the nod on vibes as much as anything.
He played great as a rookie, embraced New Orleans, and gave the fan base a jolt it badly needed. Shough went 5-4 as a starter with 2,384 yards, 13 total touchdowns, and 6 interceptions, and he helped the Saints go 4-0 in December.
For now, that’s enough to put him at the top of the list.
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