Imagine asking a room full of NFL scouts and executives which player is most likely to pull a sudden, dramatic leap in 2026—the kind that turns a promising rookie into a household name overnight. In the endless debates that follow such questions, you’d expect a dozen different names to be thrown around from all corners of the league. But when the folks who watch game tape for a living were polled this offseason, one answer kept bubbling to the top with surprising consistency: Tyler Shough, the New Orleans Saints’ second-round quarterback. It wasn’t just polite praise either. One NFL executive went as far as to say that there’s no young quarterback in football “better set up for success” than Shough. A scout echoed that sentiment, flatly declaring that Shough was the best rookie quarterback last season—not the flashiest, not the most athletic, but the one who just got it. After spending most of his first year watching from the sidelines, Shough took over as the starter and looked like the answer to a question the Saints had been asking since Drew Brees retired. By the end of the year, he had thrown for 2,384 yards with ten touchdowns and six interceptions, completing 67.6% of his passes and showing a little mobility to boot with 186 rushing yards and three scores. It wasn’t a legendary season, but it was a foundation. And now, with a full year in Kellen Moore’s offense under his belt, the people whose job it is to predict these things believe Shough is about to put it all together in a way that surprises the entire league.
What makes Shough’s situation so uniquely promising is that all the pieces around him seem to have been deliberately placed for maximum growth. The Saints weren’t a good team in 2025—they finished 6-11—but they were still just two games out of first place in a division that looks increasingly winnable. That matters because a quarterback can grow a lot faster when he’s competing for a playoff spot rather than playing for draft positioning. Kellen Moore, the head coach, is widely regarded as one of the brightest offensive minds in football, and the two have now had an entire offseason together. That’s critical, because last year Shough was learning on the fly. He lost the training camp battle to Spencer Rattler, only taking over as the starter later in the season, but once he got his chance, he never looked back. According to a senior NFL talent evaluator, Shough made a huge leap in the final quarter of the season specifically when it came to handling pocket pressure. That’s the kind of development that doesn’t show up in the box score but signals a quarterback who’s starting to see the game slower. The evaluator believes a full offseason with Moore will pay even more dividends, especially with a strong offensive line, solid receiving options, and a proven offensive coach. Another longtime scout pointed out that Shough’s college career spanned seven years, which means he’s seen every coverage, every pressure package, and every kind of adversity already. Pair that with a head coach who will play to his strengths, and you have a recipe for a quarterback who might just outperform his draft position by a mile.
To understand why Shough is so poised for this leap, you have to look back at the winding, sometimes painful road he took to the NFL. He started college at Oregon, where injuries derailed his momentum. He transferred to Texas Tech, only to run into more of the same bad luck, battling injuries and losing his starting job at one point. By the time he entered the transfer portal again, he wasn’t exactly the hottest name in college football. Jeff Brohm, his coach at Louisville, remembers that period vividly. Brohm told us that when he pulled Shough out of the portal, nobody was talking about him. He was a guy who had been hurt, benched, and written off. But Shough wanted one last chance to prove he was made of tougher stuff than his injury history suggested. Brohm and his staff did something smart: they figured out that many of Shough’s injuries came on designed runs, so they told him they weren’t going to do that anymore. Instead, they’d run a more NFL-style offense, letting the running backs carry the load while Shough operated from the pocket. That simple adjustment changed everything. Shough stayed healthy, completed 63% of his passes for 3,195 yards, threw 23 touchdowns against just six interceptions, and led Louisville to a 9-4 record. Brohm speaks about him with genuine affection, describing him as a natural leader with a good arm and a gritty toughness. He said Shough never pointed fingers when things went wrong, that he was approachable, played hard, and earned the respect of everyone in the locker room. His character, his work ethic, and his resilience made him impossible not to root for.
That resilience carried straight into his rookie season with the Saints. Shough didn’t start the year as the starter, but when he got his opportunity, he made the most of it. He went 5-4 as a starter, which doesn’t sound overwhelming until you remember the team around him was still finding its identity. By the end of the season, he was effortlessly orchestrating drives with the kind of poise that usually takes quarterbacks years to develop. One executive told us that Shough was good at everything, but the most striking part was his poise and efficiency. He didn’t make a lot of mistakes, and he ran the offense exactly the way Moore wanted it run. The fact that he did this after coming in midseason, without a full training camp as the unquestioned starter, makes his performance even more impressive. And now, with a full year in the system, Moore is supposedly going to push him harder, trusting him with more. The expectation is that Shough’s numbers will pop in 2026, particularly because the Saints have surrounded him with a stellar supporting cast. He already has Chris Olave and Juwan Johnson as reliable targets. Travis Etienne, in the right scheme, is a dangerous running back—one executive called him “way better than Alvin Kamara at this stage.” Even the one big blow to the offense, the hamstring injury suffered by rookie wide receiver Jordyn Tyson, doesn’t seem to dim the overall outlook. Tyson, whom at least one executive called “the best receiver in the draft” before his injury, will miss at least the first four weeks and possibly longer. But even with that setback, scouts believe Shough has enough around him to continue his growth. As one NFC scout put it, there’s still enough there for Shough to grow, and he has a much better team around him now than he did at any point last year.
While Shough is the most prominent name to emerge from conversations about potential breakout players in 2026, the same informal survey turned up a couple of fascinating names in Chicago. The Bears, under head coach Ben Johnson, have a reputation for turning offensive players into dangerous weapons, and Johnson apparently has two in the pipeline who are ready to explode. An NFC scout told us that he believes wide receiver Luther Burden III and tight end Colston Loveland are going to become “elite” players under Johnson’s guidance, and that could happen as soon as this season. The scout actually went a step further, predicting that Burden will end up as the Bears’ No. 1 receiver, ahead of the much-hyped Rome Odunze. The reasoning is straightforward: Burden has better hands, is more reliable, and has the kind of strength that allows him to make plays in contested situations. Odunze might be more explosive, but at some point you lean on the guy who can make more plays, and that guy is Burden. Looking at the numbers from last season, Burden was quietly efficient—catching 47 passes for 652 yards and two touchdowns—but he only saw 10.6% of the quarterback’s targets. That’s a staggeringly low number for a player of his talent, especially considering he caught over 78% of the balls thrown his way. If Johnson simply increases his target share to something closer to a true No. 1 receiver, his production could skyrocket without any fundamental change in his game.
Loveland, meanwhile, follows a similar trajectory of hidden potential waiting to be unleashed. Selected with the 10th overall pick in last year’s draft, Loveland had a painfully slow start to his rookie season. Through the first six games, he caught just 11 passes for 116 yards, and there were legitimate questions about whether he was worth the premium pick. Then something clicked. Down the final stretch of the season, including the playoffs, Loveland turned into a completely different player. In his last four games alone, he hauled in 28 catches for 378 yards and two touchdowns. That kind of late-season surge is exactly what Johnson wants to build on, especially because Johnson has always loved using tight ends as chess pieces. He finds ways to get them mismatches against slower defenders and uses their size in the red zone. The scout who talked to us about the Bears’ offensive threats was emphatic: “Johnson is going to lean on those two. Let the defenses target Rome. Those are the two guys that will kill you.” It’s a bold statement, but it captures the belief among NFL insiders that Chicago’s offense is about to have a sudden and dramatic transformation. If Burden and Loveland both make the leap as expected, the Bears could go from a team with potential to a team that genuinely scares opposing defensive coordinators. And if Tyler Shough does the same in New Orleans, the 2026 season might be remembered as the year a whole new generation of stars announced themselves to the football world—not with a draft-day splash, but with the quiet confidence of players who were simply ready when opportunity knocked. That’s the beauty of this sport: every season, someone nobody expected becomes the name everyone is talking about. This year, the NFL insiders are betting heavily that it’ll be Shough in the Big Easy, and a pair of Bears in the Windy City, who make that leap.
