Should Rattler be our starter in 2025? (merged)
I’m considering his comments along with what I saw. While Rattler struggled with a patchwork team around him, there were positive signs to me. He has all the physical tools. I thought he showed tremendous poise, and as he gained experience, thought he seemed to be getting more comfortable, going through progressions and getting the ball out.
I'm basing it on what I saw as well. Rattler struggled both in college and his starts with the Saints in regards to decision making and ball placement. There were times with the Saints that he had time in the pocket and still struggled with both of those. He didn't really show any improvement in those areas and those are the two most important things for a QB to have consistent success.
The other thing I saw happened after he threw the ball. If a receive didn't catch a ball that was poorly placed and hard to catch, he would get visibly upset with the receiver, not himself, but the receiver. I get the impression that he may not have matured as much as some think he has. College programs and agents teach players how to say all the right things. There's a few yellow flags for me that what Rattler says doesn't line up with what he actually acts.
No Saints coach since Payton has ever talked poorly about any of their QB's in public, yet they have cut a lot of backup QB's through the years and some starters in the last few years. I think people think the Saints have to have a Brees or Mahomes level QB to win the Super Bowl, so they are looking for the next Brees or Mahomes. I think Rattler's similar appearence to Mahommes and mimicry of Mahommes, like the head wrap he wears, has people wishfully seeing potential in Rattler that he hasn't actually shown.
Really strong armed QB's get people excited because people love those deep passes, but it's easier to win with smart accurate short to medium passinggame with an unreliable deep game, than it is to win with a reliable deep game, but unwise and innacurate short to medium passing game.
That the team went 0-6 isn’t a surprise to me, nor is it necessarily alarming.
The record doesn't mean anything to me. Rattler's play wasn't alarming, but it also didn't inspire confidence for me that he'll be anything better than average. I think he's fools gold, which isn't terrible, it just ain't gold.
I’m not making a bold prediction about Rattler. I do think there were some good indications and I’d like to see more.
I'm not making any bold predictions either. I thought Brooks was going work out a lot better than he did and was a little disappointed that Payton didn't give him a try, but I didn't dwell on it, even before Brees showed who he was.
We have no idea what the future holds for Penix or Rattler. So what?
Pelisserios Rattler and Penix draft report was not about which is better. It's about how things unfolded did not line up with Pelisserio's anonymous sources. Eisen was saying that surely Moore looked at tape of Carr, so he has an opinion on Carr and Pelisserio changed the focus to how the coach candidates were really high on Rattler, implying that they weren't high on Carr.
Pelisserio has been hyping Rattler for awhile now, so I don't take his word on anything he says anyonymous sources have told him about Rattler. We don't know that coaches weren't even higher on Carr than Rattler, because Pelisserio switched the converation to Rattler. He constantly does that. Guess who started the story that the Saints executives really like Rattler, again without naming any sources. Reporters talk about how much the Saints love Rattler, but they shy away from asking the Saints about Rattler in press conferences. They did it yesterday.