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Katherine Terrell, ESPN Staff Writer
Editor’s note: New Orleans coach Dennis Allen named QB Spencer Rattler as the starter against the Buccaneers on Wednesday.
NEW ORLEANS — The New Orleans Saints held a competition all summer to find out what they had in both of their backup quarterbacks. The Saints have played coy about who actually won the competition, listing Derek Carr’s backup as Spencer Rattler or Jake Haener on the depth chart.
Now they will likely have to show their true hand on Sunday afternoon against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after Carr went down with an oblique injury on “Monday Night Football.” A source told ESPN an MRI confirmed Carr’s injury but wouldn’t put a timeline on how long he will be sidelined. New Orleans will potentially be starting either Rattler, a rookie fifth-round pick out of South Carolina, or Haener, who was selected in the fourth round of the 2023 draft out of Fresno State.
What will the Saints be getting if Rattler or Haener ends up being the starter? According to Saints quarterback coach Andrew Janocko, either an outwardly confident quarterback in Haener or a silently sure one in Rattler.
“I’d say each guy has a little different way of showing it. Spencer’s a little more the sniper. He’s the special ops guy, he’s not going to tell you,” Janocko said.
The Saints said they wanted to keep the backup quarterback competition going beyond camp. So far, it’s been Haener who has come in for Carr, taking snaps for him in blowout wins and also attempting seven passes in the fourth quarter of Monday’s loss to the Kansas City Chiefs. Rattler has been inactive as the emergency third quarterback.
Saints coach Dennis Allen said in September that neither backup would be getting many first-team reps in practice despite what their designation says on the depth chart.
“Whoever the backup quarterback is, and I don’t care whether it’s a young player or a veteran player, in all the years that I’ve been in the league, that player gets very few, if any first-team reps in practice, unless there’s extenuating circumstances as like there was last year where Derek was a little bit limited on some days and I don’t anticipate that being a whole lot different,” Allen said.
That means Janocko will have his work cut out for him trying to get the backups ready to start on a short week. The Saints have two games in nine days, hosting the Buccaneers on Sunday and then the Denver Broncos on “Thursday Night Football” in Week 7.
The timing is poor for both the preparation of the backups and Carr’s ability to return from an injury that could take several weeks to heal.
“Whoever you are in the room, you better be ready to go,” Janocko said earlier in the season. “The reality is, if you’re [the backup] or you’re [the third-string quarterback], you’re one snap away from playing or two snaps away from playing. … Klint [Kubiak] sets a standard that it doesn’t matter what your depth chart [says], where you are, you prepare like the starters. So to me it’s only been positive and to keep competing in everything we do every single day, whoever they say No. 2 is, whoever they say No. 3 is, to me that’s not an issue because both guys got to be ready to go.”
Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson recently missed a game with an oblique injury. Former Saints quarterback Drew Brees missed two weeks with an oblique strain in 2014.
“For me not to be out there with my guys, no matter the situation, it takes something,” a somber Carr said after the loss to the Chiefs on Monday. “I couldn’t do what I needed to do in the simplest form.”
If Carr misses time, it will be his first missed game due to injury since his 2017 season with the Oakland Raiders.
Rattler or Haener will be the 10th starting quarterback for the Saints since Brees missed time with injuries in the 2019 and 2020 seasons. Taysom Hill and Teddy Bridgewater started games in his place.
There have been five more unique starters since Brees retired after the 2020 season: Jameis Winston, Trevor Siemian, Ian Book, Andy Dalton and Carr (Hill also started five games in 2021 after Winston was hurt).
Haener and Rattler don’t have much experience as NFL quarterbacks, so they’ll have to rely on their college experience if they see playing time.
Haener was a three-season starter for Fresno State from 2020 to 2022. The Bulldogs went 10-4 in 2022. Haener completed 72% of his passes that season for 2,896 yards and 20 touchdowns after missing four games with a sprained and fractured ankle.
He was suspended the first six games of the 2023 season for violating the NFL’s performance-enhancing-drug policy and was a healthy scratch upon his return behind veteran backup Winston. Winston went in for an injured Carr three times and also took snaps during games that were considered blowouts.
Rattler, who starred in the Netflix documentary, “QB1: Beyond the Lights” in high school, spent the first three seasons of his college career at Oklahoma and was considered a Heisman contender in the 2021 season.
He led the conference in completion percentage, passing yards, passing touchdowns and quarterback rating during the 2020 season, but he transferred to South Carolina in 2022 after losing his starting job to Caleb Williams.
Rattler completed 68.9% of his passes in his final season at South Carolina, passing for 3,186 yards and 19 touchdowns before going on to play in the Senior Bowl, where he was named Senior Bowl MVP.
“I think just from an arm talent standpoint and the ability to make all the throws … he’s got enough mobility in the pocket,” Allen said after they drafted Rattler. “I think this is a guy that has been through a lot of adversity, faced a lot of criticism and he’s come out on the other side and I think that’s a good quality to have as a quarterback.”
The Saints’ quarterback situation has been considered one of the most atypical in the league this year due to the age and inexperience of both backups. Now one of them will have a chance to prove why the Saints drafted them.
“However long Derek wants to keep playing, they’ve got to try to potentially draft somebody … try to potentially set up things for the future,” Haener said in the offseason after Rattler was drafted. “And if that’s me and Spencer, whoever is better, whoever can set this organization up for future success, then I’m all for it. That’s how I see it. I want to try to be a starter in this league. If that’s competing with people and setting myself up to be the No. 2 this year, and down the road, who knows? That’s great.”