Saints Camp Report: Is QB1 Emerging? | Which RB Steps Up Behind Alvin Kamara?

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Jeff Duncan joins Matt Moscona to recap Day 7 of New Orleans Saints training camp — and he doesn’t hold back. Duncan, who’s covered the team for 26 years, says this might be the best practice he’s ever seen from the Saints.

We dive into:

🔥 Why Day 7 was so impressive
🧠 The QB competition: Shough vs. Rattler vs. Haener and how it’s unfolding
🏈 Kellen Moore already winning over the locker room and the fan base
🏃‍♂️ A deep look at the RB room behind Alvin Kamara — who’s standing out?

If you’re a Saints fan, you won’t want to miss this insight-packed conversation.

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Photo Credit: USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Connect

Welcome to the AFR Saints channel where we provide you daily content on your favorite team, the New Orleans Saints. Do us a favor and hit that subscribe button. Be sure to leave your comments below and smash that like button. Who that New Orleans Saints are back on the practice field as training camp continues. Jeff Duncan, nola.com times picune was there. Good enough to join us now. Jeff, great to talk as always, man. How are you doing? Good, man. How you doing, brother? Man, I’m doing awesome. Um, all right. So, I saw your tweet. Uh, I’ll reference it here for those who haven’t seen it yet. Um, it’s already been seen 152,000 times, so clearly it was notable. Uh, you wrote, “I’ve seen a lot of practices in my 26 years covering the Saints, and today was one of the best that I can remember from a strictly competitive standpoint. Plays being made from both sides at all levels, from all over the field.” Good stuff. Okay. Uh, please explain. Yeah, look, I think Matt, you’ve been to a million practices in your career as well, and they tend to all start to blend together. So, when one like today stands out, I mean, not only from just the effort and kind of competitive nature, but the playmaking on on both sides that I I did not do this on purpose. uh intentionally did not reference the Super Bowl team of 2009 because as we know in this day and age the the hype train will go crazy. But it did remind me Matt of those days with Greg Williams defense and John Bilma and that group competing at a high level against Drew Brees and Shawn Peyton. It it felt like that. I mean, Brandon Staley was throwing the kitchen sink with his new defensive scheme at Kell Moore and and the offense and then they were responding and it was just fun. It was 50 to 60 snaps of team drills which we haven’t seen a lot of. So, all that kind of played into it. So, what should we I’m not making any correlation to the 09 or any of those teams. Like I think this is maybe a five- win team. I think they’re going to be very bad in the win loss column. What if anything should we make of that observation? Well, maybe expectations are so low uh you know with this team which is very unusual. I think we all agree this team has for a while has had expectations to win the division. Um maybe there’s somewhere in between uh you know a team that could maybe be a sleeper team for a playoff birth and what we’re seeing nationally which is this is the worst team or one of the three worst teams in the league trolling what the bottom feeders like the Browns and the Giants. Maybe they’re somewhere in between those two extremes. I don’t think anybody should read into this. I’ve covered a million uh training camp workouts and um you know what translates to regular season sometimes I think uh it’s two totally different things but maybe there’s somewhere in between there. They’re not one of the worst teams in the league and there’s some some reason for a little optimism. U he’s on Twitter at jeffd Duncan give him a follow nola.com the times pickyune. Okay. Um, one of the reasons, Jeeoff, I would argue that they will be one of the worst teams in the league is they have uh nar a quarterback with a win as an NFL starter. That’s that’s really really hard to overcome. Um, any reason for optimism around any of the quarterbacks from what you’ve seen so far? Yeah, great point. And I think that overshadows any level of optimism you have just because of the inexperience factor. I think we’ve seen in this league how difficult it is to play quarterback as a rookie. I mean, the Jaden Daniels of the world are few and far between. More often than not, you have Caleb Williams, the number one pick in the entire draft, really struggled. Bryce Young the year before, really struggling. Bo Nicks took half a season before he started to kind of feel comfortable and produce. And even if you go back, Matt, to Jaden Daniels opener a year ago, I mean, three fumbles, uh, you know, I think he threw for 190 yards, they got blown out. It’s hard. So, I think any expectations on the quarterbacks have to be measured right now. I have not seen anything that tells me, boy, there they’ve got a guy now that’s going to be their long-term quarterback. I don’t think anybody has seen that. I do think Spencer Rattler has been the most productive and consistent so far, but I haven’t seen anything of the three that makes me believe that this team might not be back in the quarterback hunt in a year or so. Okay. Um, what maybe from today specifically with this very competitive practice, what or who stood out in a in a positive light? Well, Kool-Aid McKinstry, the quarterback from Alabama, the light bulbs come on for him in year two. Uh he’s in better shape. He really didn’t get into great shape as a rookie because of he was coming off of a a postseason operation. Uh you can see the confidence level. I can see why they moved on from Marshon Latimore. They feel like he is going to be a true number one corner in this league. Those guys are hard to find. He’s playing at a very high level. I think Chase Young, look, I’m the biggest skeptic in the world, Matt, on guys that we keep hearing about the potential and then it never comes to realization, but he just looks much lighter, much more athletic and healthy. You see why he was such a high draft pick and so highly thought of. And you know, this was Brandon Sailor reminded me of this today. He’s 26 years old, so he’s still young. He was a young player coming into the draft. So maybe they’ve got a little more juice on defense than I expected because I I I got wore down last year watching that defense. They got banged around uh pushed around and really bullied by teams like the Bucks and the Packers and there’s a reason they finished 30th in the league. I thought this could be a really bad defense and I’m a little more encouraged after this camp. Um Jeff Duncan’s with us. Nola.com Times Pickyune. I get him on Twitter x jeffduncan you Jeff you mentioned in the the quarter century that you’ve covered the New Orleans Saints. You tell me if my math is off but that means you would have covered Ditka and and uh and Hllett and Payton and Allen and now Kell Moore. That’s five head coaches unless if there’s someone else that I’ve missed. Um are there thing observations you made about Moore and his staff? albeit just a week of camp, but observations you made about Moore and his staff uh that good or bad that that stand out to you relative to the other regimes you’ve covered? Yeah, some some good things I like. Uh one, he’s very sharp. I mean, very intelligent guy that I think is a very much in the mode of the modern NFL coach. What I mean by that, Matt, is you know the Cal Shanahan, Shawn McVey, Matt Laflur, they’re not screamers. yellers. I mean, this guy is as far away personalitywise from Shawn Peyton as you can get. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him raise his voice in any setting, much less on the practice field. Uh, everything’s positive. There’s very, very rarely do you hear him critique his team. Uh, and I think he’s gotten very strategically gotten the buyin from the veterans on this team. Now, the ultimate buyin comes in September when they start playing games and you can show to this team that what you’re telling them works. That’s the ultimate buy in. But early on, he’s pushed a lot of the right buttons. The one concern I have, and this is a minor concern, but it is in the back of my mind, these practices are as light as I’ve ever seen. Maybe the lightest I’ve ever seen. Now, the rest of the league’s doing something similar, but even relatively speaking, uh, just not a lot of physicality right now, and I’m wondering in the back of my mind, is this going to be, you know, kind of not an air corel, you know, Chargers type of team? Uh, but I’m I’m a little curious about that. Is is it going to translate once they start playing ball? Yeah, it’s it’s an interesting um juxtaposition, Jeff, where you and we’ve heard that a good bit, right? But it’s you have under this new CBA limited opportunity for full contact and p like they are taking a lot of that out of camp but at the same time you still want to make sure you have that element. So is there a healthy medium I think so you know John some at Tulain talked about this exact thing Matt yesterday he’s an old school linebacker played at Kentucky tough guy and he wants that in his teams. He wants his teams to be physically tough, but he said, “Look, I’m also paying sports science guys, right? You got one of the best in in the world down there in Jack Maruchi in Baton Rouge. I mean, those guys do all kinds of cutting edge uh studies and research. They know what they’re talking about. You have to trust in them as well. And that’s where football is going, listening more to the analytics.” Uh, and Summer all talked about trying to thread that needle between getting just enough physicality, but to to develop the toughness you want and the and also the conditioning that it takes to play a four quarter football game, especially down here in the South, but yet also, you know, not getting worn down the way, frankly, this Saints team did last year with the injuries. Jeeoff, um, one more for you. uh if outside of quarterback, is there a position battle for one reason or another that has caught your eye and been maybe more intriguing to you so far? Yeah, I would say behind Alvin Chimera, who who’s the who’s the next running back on this team uh that’s going to replace Alvin Chimera? I mean, that’s going to happen soon. I mean, Alvin’s 30 this year. He’s clearly the number one back, but they’ve got to find somebody that can also be a running bait with him. He’s at his best when he had Mark Ingram alongside him splitting carries. I think less is more with Chimera. And right now, I’d say the two veterans that they have in camp, Cam Acres and Cloud Edwards Air, neither one of them has shown me much or stood out in any way. Now, we’ll find out more in preseason games when the running game is really established. Uh, but right now I don’t know if anybody can tell you who the number two back is on this team and I don’t think that’s a good thing. He is Jeff Duncan. Nolan.com Times Pickune. Get him on XJFD Duncan you can follow him there. Hey man, we always appreciate the time. Thank you. Anytime Matt, take care, buddy. Hey, thanks so much for watching. Please leave your comments. I love to interact. And be sure to hit the red subscribe button below. with you.