Nathan Shepherd
New Orleans SaintsModel Score
How good he is at what he is supposed to be doing, out of 100. Not a projection of what he will do next, and not a read on his contract. Median is about 70, and a 95 is rare. How it is built →
Season Stats · 16 games
Draft & College
He went about where consensus had him.
Comps
STM Take
Career STTM range mostly in tier 6-8 across seven years to tier 2 (#13) breakout in 2025 is a 44-spot one-year jump that's one of the most dramatic late-career interior defender reinventions in recent memory. The Fort Hays State Division II 3rd-round origin plus eight years of NFL survival give him the rare D2 journeyman résumé. The 2026 question is whether Shepherd holds tier 3 or better across a full second Saints season or whether 2025 was a one-year context spike.
Shepherd came out of Fort Hays State (Division II) as the New York Jets' 3rd-round pick (72nd overall) in 2018 and has bounced through the Jets, Saints, and back across eight NFL seasons. His STTM career runs tier 7 (#52) in 2021, tier 6 (#44) in 2022, tier 6 (#42) in 2023, tier 8 (#57) in 2024, and tier 2 (#13) breakout in 2025.
Strengths
- Tier 2 (#13) breakout in year eight as a 2018 Fort Hays State Division II 3rd-round pick puts him in the rarest outlier-positive late-career class at the position.
- Eight years of NFL survival across two systems gives him real veteran market value with the late-career breakout.
Concerns
- Single tier 2 finish in an otherwise tier 6-8 STTM history puts the 2025 finish on a small sample with significant downside risk.
- New Orleans's broader defensive identity transition plus the QB rebuild compresses the structural support around Shepherd's continued production.
What to watch: Whether Shepherd holds tier 4 or better across the full 2026 Saints season, the threshold for confirming the 2025 breakout was scheme-driven rather than a one-year context spike.