Every New Orleans Saints starting QB ever: full list
While the New Orleans Saints were fortunate to have 15 years of Drew Brees at quarterback, it hasn't always been great at the position. Brees and Archie Manning are the two biggest names for the Saints at the signal-caller spot but there have been so many more quarterbacks to take snaps for the black and gold.
Let's go through each decade and list every quarterback who started a game for New Orleans during that time. Ready for a stroll down memory lane?
New Orleans Saints starting quarterbacks from 1960 to 1969
Name (Time spent with Saints) | Starts this decade (Career starts with Saints) | Playoff starts this decade (Career playoff starts with Saints) |
|---|---|---|
Gary Cuozzo (1967) | 10 (10) | 0 (0) |
Billy Kilmer (1967-1970) | 29 (39) | 0 (0) |
Karl Sweetan (1968) | 3 (3) | 0 (0) |
The Saints had three quarterbacks take snaps for them in the 1960s and the first-ever Saints quarterback was Gary Cuozzo, who started 10 games during the inaugural 1967 season. Billy Kilmer took over from there and went on to start 29 games during the 60s with Karl Sweetan getting three spot starts in 1968.
New Orleans Saints starting quarterbacks from 1970 to 1979
Name (Time spent with Saints) | Starts this decade (Career starts with Saints) | Playoff starts this decade (Career playoff starts with Saints) |
|---|---|---|
Billy Kilmer (1967-1970) | 10 (39) | 0 (0) |
Edd Hargett (1969-1972) | 8 (8) | 0 (0) |
Archie Manning (1971-1982) | 102 (129) | 0 (0) |
Bobby Scott (1973-1981) | 13 (14) | 0 (0) |
Larry Cipa (1974-1975) | 3 (3) | 0 (0) |
Bobby Douglass (1976-1977) | 8 (8) | 0 (0) |
Kilmer stuck around for one year of the next decade, starting 10 games for NOLA in 1970. Edd Hargett started eight games before paving the way to Archie Manning taking over at quarterback. The Saints spent the second overall pick on Manning in the 1971 NFL Draft and he started over 100 games for them during his first decade with the team. Unfortunately, the team was garbage then and Manning had zero playoff appearances as a Saint.
Bobby Scott, Larry Cipa, and Bobby Douglass were the other three quarterbacks to start for the Saints during the 70s with Scott getting the most starts out of that group with 13.
New Orleans Saints starting quarterbacks from 1980 to 1989
Name (Time spent with Saints) | Starts this decade (Career starts with Saints) | Playoff starts this decade (Career playoff starts with Saints) |
|---|---|---|
Archie Manning (1971-1982) | 27 (129) | 0 (0) |
Dave Wilson (1981-1988) | 31 (31) | 0 (0) |
Bobby Scott (1973-1981) | 1 (14) | 0 (0) |
Ken Stabler (1982-1984) | 22 (22) | 0 (0) |
Guido Merkens (1980-1985) | 13 (13) | 0 (0) |
Richard Todd (1984-1985) | 14 (14) | 0 (0) |
Bobby Hebert (1985-1992) | 50 (75) | 1 (3) |
John Fourcade (1987-1990) | 6 (11) | 0 (0) |
Manning kicked the 1980s off as the Saints starter but only spent three years of the decade in the black and gold. The Saints cycled through several quarterbacks after Manning left, with Ken Stabler and Bobby Hebert being the big starters out of this bunch. Hebert led the Saints to their first-ever playoff appearance and looked to be the team's franchise quarterback entering the 1990s.
New Orleans Saints starting quarterbacks from 1990 to 1999
Name (Time spent with Saints) | Starts this decade (Career starts with Saints) | Playoff starts this decade (Career playoff starts with Saints) |
|---|---|---|
Bobby Hebert (1985-1992) | 25 (75) | 2 (3) |
John Fourcade (1987-1990) | 5 (11) | 0 (0) |
Steve Walsh (1990-1993) | 19 (19) | 0 (0) |
Wade Wilson (1993-1994) | 14 (14) | 0 (0) |
Mike Buck (1991-1993) | 1 (1) | 0 (0) |
Jim Everett (1994-1996) | 47 (47) | 0 (0) |
Doug Nussmeier (1996-1997) | 2 (2) | 0 (0) |
Heath Shuler (1997) | 9 (9) | 0 (0) |
Billy Joe Hobert (1997-1999) | 12 (12) | 0 (0) |
Danny Wuerffel (1997-1999) | 6 (6) | 0 (0) |
Kerry Collins (1998) | 7 (7) | 0 (0) |
Billy Joe Tollivar (1998-1999) | 11 (11) | 0 (0) |
Jake Delhomme (1999-2000) | 2 (2) | 0 (0) |
The Saints had 13 different starting quarterbacks in the 1990s with the most well-known names being Bobby Hebert and Jim Everett. Hebert is the only quarterback who started playoff games for New Orleans during the 90s. It's also pretty funny that the Saints happened to have two quarterbacks named Billy Joe start games for them in the 90s.
New Orleans Saints starting quarterbacks from 2000 to 2009
Name (Time spent with Saints) | Starts this decade (Career starts with Saints) | Playoff starts this decade (Career playoff starts with Saints) |
|---|---|---|
Jeff Blake (2000-2001) | 11 (11) | 0 (0) |
Aaron Brooks (2000-2005) | 82 (82) | 2 (2) |
Todd Bouman (2003-2005) | 3 (3) | 0 (0) |
Drew Brees (2006-2020) | 63 (228) | 5 (17) |
Mark Brunell (2008-2009) | 1 (1) | 0 (0) |
The turn of the century signaled a new era for the Saints, as they had two franchise quarterbacks during the 2000s. Aaron Brooks led the Saints to their first-ever playoff win and in the 2006 offseason, New Orleans changed forever when the Saints signed Drew Brees in free agency.
Brees is a future Hall of Fame quarterback who spent 15 years in the Big Easy while starting 17 total playoff games. He was the MVP of Super Bowl XLIV and changed the culture of Saints football forever.
New Orleans Saints starting quarterbacks from 2010 to 2019
Name (Time spent with Saints) | Starts this decade (Career starts with Saints) | Playoff starts this decade (Career playoff starts with Saints) |
|---|---|---|
Drew Brees (2006-2020) | 153 (228) | 10 (17) |
Luke McCown (2013-2015) | 1 (1) | 0 (0) |
Teddy Bridgewater (2018-2019) | 6 (6) | 0 (0) |
Having a franchise quarterback means that aside from occasional injuries, not many other guys are going to take snaps for your team. Brees started over 150 games for the Saints in the 2010s and that led to him and just two other quarterbacks starting games for the black and gold during the decade.
Luke McCown started a random game in 2015 when Brees got banged up and Teddy Bridgewater became a Saints legend when he started six games in Brees' absence in 2019 and went 5-0 during that time. He started another game for the team the year prior as well.
New Orleans Saints starting quarterbacks from 2020 to Present
Name (Time spent with Saints) | Starts this decade (Career starts with Saints) | Playoff starts this decade (Career playoff starts with Saints) |
|---|---|---|
Drew Brees (2006-2020) | 12 (228) | 2 (17) |
Taysom Hill (2017-Present) | 9* (9) | 0 (0) |
Jameis Winston (2020-2023) | 10 (10) | 0 (0) |
Trevor Siemian (2021) | 4 (4) | 0 (0) |
Ian Book (2021) | 1 (1) | 0 (0) |
Andy Dalton (2022) | 14 (14) | 0 (0) |
Derek Carr (2023-Present) | 17 (17) | 0 (0) |
We had one year of Drew Brees in the 2020s before he hung up the cleats and walked off into the retirement sunset. Since then, the Saints have been in quarterback purgatory, trying to bank on guys like Jameis Winston and Derek Carr to get them back to the playoffs.
Taysom Hill has started more than nine games with the Saints but I only counted his starts as a quarterback. The other names on here are probably guys you wish that you could forget about.
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