This is the hopeful time of year after all, so the New Orleans Saints young quarterbacks gave some reason for optimism in the second installment of Organized Team Activities (OTAs).
New Orleans took practice indoors Thursday as rain pelted the city in the morning hours. They ran through a roughly 80-minute session at their indoor facility, with the bulk of it spent on positional drills and walk-throughs.
But there were two competitive periods pitting the offensive and defensive skill players against each other, and that’s where rookie quarterback Tyler Shough exhibited the traits that made the Saints select him 40th overall.
Onto the observations.
Attendance
Since OTAs are voluntary, several key veterans did not participate in Thursday’s practice. Based on social media videos from earlier days, some of these players appear to have been in New Orleans this week.
The following players were not present at Thursday’s session: Taysom Hill, Tyrann Mathieu, Alvin Kamara, J.T. Gray, Demario Davis, Bryan Bresee, Davon Godchaux, Nathan Shepherd and Cam Jordan.
The following players were present, but not participating: Jake Haener, Quincy Riley, Dallin Holker and Foster Moreau.
Shough’s wow moments
Take everything here with a grain of salt. The Saints have yet to go through a competitive 11-on-11 drill, the defense in particular was without several starting players, and there was no pass rush to navigate. Things will get a lot more difficult for quarterback Shough.
Now, with all the necessary qualifiers out of the way: The rookie can absolutely spin it.
Given about 15 plays in a seven-on-seven period, Shough made several attention-grabbing throws that showed off a varied skillset as a thrower.
There were the two deep shots that displayed his arm strength. Shough hit a pair of long touchdowns, one to Bub Means and the other to Donovan Peoples-Jones, both of whom had a step on their man with no safety help over the top. Shough hit each of them in stride with beautiful throws down the left sideline.
Then there was the perfectly layered throw he made to tight end Jack Stoll to open up the second period of seven on sevens. Stoll was running a left to right crossing route behind the second level of the defense, and Shough delivered a strike that floated just over the linebacker’s hands while having enough zip to beat the safety.
But his best throw of the day might have come on an incompleted pass: Rolling to his left, Shough twisted his body and flicked an off-platform throw about 20 yards downfield to Cedrick Wilson. The coverage was good enough to force a contested catch that Wilson wasn’t able to pull down, but the pass could not have been walked to Wilson better. It was high and toward the sideline, and only Wilson was able to get a hand on it.
It wasn’t a perfect day for Shough, who ended the session with two straight incompletions, the last of which was thrown late over the middle and intercepted by Rejzohn Wright. But the good outweighed the bad by a significant margin in the limited competitive periods the Saints held.
There was little question about Shough’s arm coming out of Louisville, and the real test is going to come when he has to read defenses and navigate pressure — the latter being a relative weakness of his in college. But it is good to see the skill play out on an NFL field.
Odds and ends
No changes to the offensive line alignment: Kelvin Banks at left tackle, Trevor Penning at left guard and Taliese Fuaga at right tackle. I would bet that is how they intend to go into the season with their starting five.
It’s going to be really interesting to see how the returner group plays out this year. Rashid Shaheed is one of the NFL’s best, but it would make sense if the Saints would rather not have him take on the additional injury risk. The kick return group Thursday included Kendre Miller, Marcus Yarns and Velus Jones. New Orleans did not practice punt returns, but during one special teams segment Shaheed, Chris Olave and Dante Pettis were all fielding “punts” from a JUGS machine while the coverage unit went through drills.
Shough stole the show Thursday, but Spencer Rattler had some nice moments as well. He appears to be very comfortable operating the offense in Year 2, which is going to earn him points with this staff.
Chase Young was not at last week’s session, but he was on the field this week. Both he and Carl Granderson look like slimmed down versions of the players that took the field last year, which makes sense if it’s true because the Saints are going to be asking them to drop into coverage.
It’s been hard to get a sense of what the Saints have in Yarns, an undrafted rookie running back out of Delaware, because all the running backs have been asked to do in competitive periods is catch a few passes out of the backfield. He’s on the smaller side (listed at 5-11, 190) which will limit him in the NFL, but he does move well and is someone worth keeping in mind as the summer progresses.
