Life without Drew Brees has been hard on the New Orleans Saints. They’ve wandered the desert from one quarterback to the next, constantly searching for an oasis — only to stumble into one mirage after another.
When Derek Carr put pen to paper on a four-year, $150 million contract this offseason, it looked like the Saints had finally found what they were looking for. But their offense has left a lot to be desired with Carr under center, and comparing his performance to the quarterbacks who preceded him doesn’t paint a flattering picture.
Some quarterbacks (like Trevor Siemian) have a much smaller sample size than others. Some were only in New Orleans for one season (like Andy Dalton) while we have multiple years of data to work with for others (Jameis Winston and Taysom Hill). So while it isn’t the cleanest comparison, we’re looking at per-game averages and per-dropback stats as opposed to volume metrics to try and account for the variance in sample sizes.
And because this is a blind test, we’ll hide each quarterback’s identity until the end. We’re effectively taking the names off the jerseys to see how they stack up by the numbers, removing biases and factors like contracts and play callers. Here’s what we found, with the top performer in each category highlighted in bold text: