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- Click here to listen to this article - Share via See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred - Some of the biggest questions of the 2026 season will center upon quarterbacks who are looking to extend their careers, shine in the playoffs or prove themselves in the postseason. - Tyler Shough and Fernando Mendoza are among the young quarterbacks worth watching this season. Matthew Stafford of the Rams is the NFL’s reigning most valuable player. Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes has three Super Bowl rings. No signal-caller in NFL history has scored more touchdowns with his legs than Buffalo’s Josh Allen. There are elite quarterbacks from coast to coast. But heading into the 2026 season, there are many more questions than answers when it comes to the most important position on the field. Can the Chargers’ Justin Herbert finally win a playoff game? How long before the Las Vegas Raiders turn to No. 1 overall pick Fernando Mendoza? What does Sam Darnold need to do to help the Seattle Seahawks repeat as Super Bowl champions? Who is the real CJ Stroud? Is the Houston Texans quarterback the spectacular rookie we saw in 2023, or the struggling player whose numbers have been on a steady decline the past two seasons? Geno Smith is back with the New York Jets, the team that drafted him. Malik Willis, once the future in Tennessee, is now in Miami. Kyler Murray has gone from the heat of Arizona to the soon-to-be cold of Minnesota. And Russell Wilson, last year’s opening-day starter for the New York Giants, is now a studio analyst for CBS. All the reshuffling is enough to leave an onlooker shook — or, in the case of the New Orleans Saints, Shough. That’s close to how you pronounce the new starter at quarterback there, Tyler Shough, whose last name sounds like “shuck,” as in shucking oysters. The Saints are hoping they have a pearl in their second-round pick from 2025, whose seven-year college career spanned three schools — Oregon, Texas Tech and Louisville — before New Orleans made him the club’s highest-drafted quarterback since Archie Manning went No. 2 in 1971. Shough might have been the Day One starter last season but lost out to Spencer Rattler. The Saints got off to a 1-7 start, and Shough got the QB1 job in Week 9. That was just in time to face the Rams, who beat them, 34-10. Nonetheless, he played well enough for the rest of the season to lock down the starting job this year. “I still have a lot to prove,” he said in a recent interview with NFL Network. “I only played nine games and it still feels like Year 1 in some aspects. But I also feel very comfortable in some other aspects. So I’m just excited to be out here, and getting better every day with all the guys.” In Las Vegas, the big question is how long will the Raiders wait with Kirk Cousins at the helm before seeing what they have in Mendoza, who won the Heisman Trophy last season and led Indiana to its first undefeated season, its first No. 1 ranking and first national championship. Do the Raiders have the patience to allow him to wait and watch the way the Chiefs did with Mahomes — or decades earlier, the Chargers and Green Bay Packers had the luxury to do with Philip Rivers and Aaron Rodgers — or do they press him into action as a rookie? Doubtless, Tom Brady will have a say. That legendary quarterback is part owner of the Las Vegas franchise and played a big role in the decision to draft Mendoza. In training camp, Mendoza has made some impressive throws, and others he’d like to have back, such as his second pass of the night in a preseason game against the Texans. That was intercepted and returned for an 80-yard touchdown. “Plenty to clean up,” first-year Raiders coach Klint Kubiak said of Mendoza after the game. “Plenty to get better at. Plenty we can do better for him as coaches. Plenty that he can learn from.” Sean McVay and the Rams are adopting a different approach from the San Francisco 49ers by delaying travel to Melbourne, Australia, for their season opener. Sometimes, it takes a while for a young quarterback to start clicking. That certainly was the case for Darnold, the onetime USC star who was the third overall pick by the Jets in 2018, traded to Carolina three years later, watched and learned as a backup in San Francisco in 2023, then made a splash in Minnesota before joining the Seahawks as a free agent in 2025. His steady play was a big reason Seattle went on to win the Super Bowl last season. Now he has a chance to lead the Seahawks to back-to-back Lombardi Trophies. As for Houston’s Stroud, he’s just trying to relocate the potential he showed in 2023 when he was the league’s offensive rookie of the year. In hopes of doing that, he’s tried to turn down the outside noise. “I think pressure is part of my job,” he told reporters at the start of training camp. “That’s just something I think is part of the gig and something I’m not naive to. But I’ve learned you have to keep the main thing the main thing ... I have to focus on football.”