How Tyler Shough and the Saints are keeping their feet on the ground while the rest of the NFL takes notice

BengalsNew Orleans Saints quarterback Tyler Shough.AP Photo/Stephanie ScarbroughCLEVELAND, Ohio — Two wins. National attention. Award speculation already trending on prediction markets. For most teams, that kind of momentum would be enough to ease into a comfortable week of good press and congratulatory back-slaps. For the New Orleans Saints, it apparently isn’t even close.When Saints head coach Kellen Moore was asked about the sudden wave of Coach of the Year hype and MVP chatter surrounding his team, he didn’t exactly ride the wave.“There’s a lot of work to go,” Moore said. “We’ve won two games and there’s a lot of games to go, I think our guys are just focused on every opportunity and this will be a fun challenge.”How will Deshaun Watson be received + Browns have to get the run game going: Orange and Brown Talk (Podcast)Why Quinshon Judkins could break out in Week 3 against the PanthersBrowns rookie WR Denzel Boston didn’t expect to have this fast of a start, but he’s not surprisedOne game. He said one game — even though the Saints are sitting at 2-0. The framing was deliberate. Moore has seen enough NFL seasons to know that early attention is a distraction dressed up as a reward, and his message was clear: enjoy nothing until you’ve earned everything.Quarterback Tyler Shough echoed that philosophy with even more candor. As national media requests flooded in following back-to-back road wins, Shough acknowledged the attention but refused to accept it as a sign of arrival.“It obviously comes when your team is doing well,” Shough said. “We want the Saints to do well. We want to create that sense of urgency, create that sense of accomplishment throughout the ebbs and flows of the season. There’s going to be downs, there’s going to be ups, but at the same time, we want that.”That kind of self-assessment — delivered calmly, without drama — tells you something about the culture Moore and his staff have built in New Orleans. The standard isn’t winning. The standard is perfecting the details that make winning sustainable.Shough, when pressed on whether the Saints had carried momentum from last season into this one, was honest about how much progress has been made while refusing to overstate it.“I know one thing is that it is night and day from last year as far as how we’re feeling from an operation standpoint, a chemistry standpoint, day-to-day just our play style, our culture,” Shough said. “But at the same time, those little things, if we want to compete and play high-level football week in and week out, we have to clean those things up. So, it’s not where we want to be.”Not where they want to be. At 2-0.That’s the psychological discipline at the core of what New Orleans is building. The hype is real. The results have been real. But inside the Saints’ building, the message stays the same: details first, celebration later. And from the sound of it, later hasn’t arrived yet.The Cleveland.com Express Desk uses AI tools to assist in producing content, which is reviewed and edited by staff.