The sudden retirement of Saints quarterback Derek Carr leaves the team in a weird spot. On one hand, rumors already swirled that he would need surgery and would likely miss the 2025 season, but nothing had been definitive yet.
Now, it's definitive, and the Saints have to figure out life after Carr.
So, what's the team going to do? New Orleans drafted Tyler Shough in the second round of last month's NFL Draft, so it could just hand the reins over to him.
Could doesn't mean should, though. Despite being the oldest prospect in this draft class, making Shough the team's Week 1 starter feels like a recipe for disaster. He looked really good at Louisville this past season, but second-round rookies starting have an uneven track record. You get success stories like Jalen Hurts (though he wasn't a starter until late in his rookie year), Andy Dalton and, well...Derek Carr himself, but then there are the Jimmy Clausen and DeShone Kizer paths. Doesn't Shough feel like a Jimmy Clausen? Come on, admit it.
And with a bare cabinet of players behind Shough — like, come on, Spencer Rattler and Jake Haener are not the answer — the Saints probably need to do something under center.
Could Jameis Winston solve the Saints quarterback issue?
What if the Saints bring in a former Saints quarterback as a stopgap? (You can decide if he's a stopgap to Shough starting or a stopgap to whoever the Saints wind up drafting in the first round next year.)
Giants beat writer Pat Leonard suggested the Giants should explore trading Jameis Winston to the Saints, a move that Leonard thinks makes sense and that I tend to agree with.
The Giants don't need Winston. Russell Wilson is the veteran starter. Jaxson Dart is the first-round pick. Tommy DeVito is the Tommy DeVito. Winston is expendable.
If the Saints want to be competitive in 2025...well, no quarterback might be able to fix that. But if the Saints want to be respectable in 2025, Winston would raise the team's floor, and his big arm would keep Chris Olave and Brandin Cooks happy.
Of course, there's probably plenty of reason for the Saints to not want to win. Kellen Moore won't be fired after one bad season. Offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier's son is one of the top quarterback prospects in next year's class. It's reasonable for the Saints to just start Shough and let him sink or swim with the future in mind.
But NFL teams don't always look to the future. Sometimes, they just want to be a decent football team right now. With that in mind, why not bring Winston back? In seven games as a starter for the team in 2021, he threw 14 touchdowns to just three interceptions, and while turnovers reared their ugly head in 2024 with the Browns, that shouldn't be such a big issue that it dissuades the team from targeting him.
If the Saints want to field a respectable NFL team in 2025, they should embrace nostalgia and give New York a call.