Tyler Shough

Ten touchdowns in five weeks is the reason he is on rosters right now, and weeks 1 through 3 of 2026 backed it up: 23.2, 22.38 and 23.8, all while being blitzed on 34% of his charted dropbacks. He held up under that heat, completing 2.5 percentage points better than expectation on 205 tracked attempts, which is why the volume turned into points instead of turnovers.

Then week 5 of 2026 happened, minus 0.16 points, the kind of week that erases two good ones. That swing is his case in miniature. Last season he cleared 15 points in 7 of his 11 played weeks but also posted a zero, in week 3 of 2025, and he sat six healthy weeks even while taking 82.5% of NO's snaps. The arm and the red-zone work were real, 7 red-zone touches ranked QB10 among 64 qualifying quarterbacks, but the weeks never came in a steady line.

But the hype deserves a real test, and ours is 186 points for the season, about 20 points under what QBs drafted around pick 137.7 have historically produced, and we only expected 11 games because 2025 ended with him benched, not hurt. He has played all five so far, which helps, and Kellen Moore and Doug Nussmeier are back running the same offense. If that minus 0.16 afternoon in week 5 of 2026 was a bad day and not a pattern, weeks 1 through 3 of 2026 are closer to who he is. Hold him through the week 8 of 2026 bye and see whether the next stretch looks like 23.8 or like minus 0.16 before you trust him as more than a matchup fill-in.