Who is Spencer Rattler, the rookie QB starting for the Saints against the Broncos? Stats, salary...

The New Orleans Saints will face the Denver Broncos for Thursday Night Football action this week, but they’ll continue to be without their starting quarterback Derek Carr. Carr suffered from an oblique injury during their Week 5 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs and is expected to miss multiple weeks.

While he’s out, it’s rookie Spencer Rattler filling in for Carr. Last week, Rattler made his debut against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In their 50-27 loss, Rattler had a decent showing, completing 22 of 40 passes for 243 yards, one touchdown, and two interceptions.

As he prepares to face the Broncos, Rattler said he’s working on improving certain faults from last week.

“I would say, just chilling a little bit in the pocket,” Rattler said. “Don’t try to extend too much when not needed. Listen to your feet and maintaining elite focus every single rep throughout the game, no matter the score. Take completions and move the chains.”

“I think getting a game under your belt helps a lot with live reps, live bullets. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten live reps, getting hit and stuff like that, a full game. It was great to be out there. Obviously, you don’t take that for granted.”

All about Spencer Rattler

The Saints drafted Rattler out of South Carolina as their first selection in the fifth round of this year’s draft. Rattler actually started college at Oklahoma, where he played for three seasons before switching to South Carolina, where he played for two years. During his five years playing ball, he completed 900-of-1,313 passes for 10,807 yards and 77 touchdowns to just 32 interceptions. Despite playing just two seasons as a Gamecock, Rattler finished his career first in school history in completion percentage (67.5), fifth in completions (523) and passing yards (6,212) and ninth in passing touchdowns (37).

Rattler signed a four-year, $4,356,480 contract with the Saints, including a $336,480 signing bonus, $336,480 guaranteed, and an average annual salary of $1,089,120, according to Spotrac.

When the Saints lost Carr to the injury, they had the choice of starting Rattler against the Bucs in Week 6, or second-year QB Jake Haener, who filled in for Carr during their blowout wins as well as the loss to the Chiefs when he was injured. They chose to go with Rattler. Coach Dennis Allen explained that they thought he would be a good fit for that particular opponent and that his ability to scramble and escape the pocket factored into the decision.

“There were a lot of factors that go into it,” Allen said. “Certainly we felt like he’s got some mobility.”

“We just internally talked a lot about it and felt like in this particular game, that he was going to give us the best chance to win,” he said. “Both him and Jake both have been practicing extremely hard, preparing to be the starter. It was kind of the conversation that we had at the beginning of the year that Jake would be the No. 2 to start. ... It was really basically going to be kind of a week-to-week deal and we just felt like this was, for this game, going to give us the best option.”

Through his three preseason appearances, Rattler completed 20-of-38 passes for 202 yards, one touchdown, and no interceptions while adding seven carries for 26 yards and one fumble. His debut against the Bucs was convincing enough to keep him in for at least a second week.

“Overall, I thought he did some good things,” said Saints head coach Dennis Allen after last week’s game. “There were some encouraging things, some things he’s going to learn from, from a mistake standpoint on his part. I don’t think we did enough around him to help him. It was hard for us to be able to run the football.

The Saints face the Broncos tonight at 8:15 p.m. ET from the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans. Follow along with all the live action with our text updates from our own Dane Arlauckas right here on AS USA.