The shock of Derek Carr's surprise retirement over the weekend might be starting to wear off, but the battle for who starts at quarterback next season is just heating up.

Why it matters: The Saints are rolling the dice with three young quarterbacks, a first-time head coach and a whole lot of uncertainty.

Catch up quick: We finally got details about Carr's mysterious offseason shoulder injury.

• The injury — a labral tear and rotator cuff degeneration — was significant enough that surgery couldn't guarantee Carr a full recovery even while taking him out for the full 2025 season, the team said.
• So, Carr went with the nuclear option: Retire from football. Read his statement.

What's next: That's the big question.

• Carr's retirement and other contract expirations won't clear up significant salary cap space for the Saints until 2027, according to The Times-Picayune.

State of play: For now, Tyler Shough, Spencer Rattler and Jake Haener will battle it out during training camp for the starting position.

• The Saints drafted Shough in the second round of the NFL Draft soon after news broke about Carr's injury. The 25-year-old began his college career at Oregon before transferring to Texas Tech and then Louisville.
• Rattler was a fifth-round draft pick in 2024 out of South Carolina. He played in seven games with the Saints as a rookie, completing 57% of his passes and throwing four touchdowns and five interceptions.
• Haener was a fourth-round pick in 2023. As a pro, he's thrown 39 passes.

What he's saying: "We're going to let all three of these guys roll," Saints head coach Kellen Moore said Saturday. "They've all earned these opportunities."

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Pope Leo XIV may have been born in Chicago, but his Creole roots in New Orleans give him a family history that tells a uniquely American story.

Catch up quick: Once Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was elevated to Pope Leo XIV last week, Historic New Orleans Collection genealogist Jari Honora researched his background.

• Honora identified Pope Leo's maternal grandparents as 7th Ward residents Joseph Martinez and Louise Baquié. They married at Our Lady of Sacred Heart Church in 1887 before moving to Chicago between 1910 and 1912.

That move makes Pope Leo's family part of the Great Migration, when Black families fled the Jim Crow South by the millions.

• Chicago was a common landing place, according to historian Isabel Wilkerson, with its Black population expanding from about 44,000 to more than 1 million.
• In other words, as Honora says, Pope Leo's story "is absolutely an American story."

The intrigue: For some migrants, leaving the South also meant a chance to change how they presented, which Prevost's family did, Honora says.

• "Fairly consistently, they are listed in census and other records in New Orleans as Black and 'mulatto,'" he says. "But once they migrate to Chicago, those identifiers are all switched to white."
• In New Orleans, there's a Creole term — "passé blanc" — for people of color who can "pass" for white.
• "That's just not surprising for families that are in the process of passing. I don't fault them at all," Honora says. "I see it as a decision to safeguard their livelihoods, and an economic decision both to leave New Orleans and go to larger cities in the North, as well as to shift racial identities."

What he's saying: John Prevost, the pope's brother, tells the New York Times his family did not discuss their Creole ancestry.

What it means to be Creole

🎶 PJ Morton recently bought a 52-year-old music studio in Bogalusa where folks like Stevie Wonder and Willie Nelson have recorded. It's part of a mission to invest in Louisiana music landmarks, he says. (Rolling Stone)

Chef Melissa Araujo, who owns the James Beard-recognized Alma Cafe, was arrested and faces felony charges for Medicaid fraud. (WAFB)

• In a statement, Araujo said she is "fully cooperating" with investigators. (Eater)

🤠 Lainey Wilson took home four Academy Of Country Music Awards last week. (Billboard)

🏝️ Horn Island, which is part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore off the Mississippi Coast, is for sale. Well, 96 acres of it anyway, which is, unbeknownst to most, privately owned. It's not clear if anyone could develop the uninhabited barrier island. (Sun Herald)

😍 Amy Schumer gave Homeworthy a tour of her shotgun house in New Orleans. (YouTube)

More than 200 CEOs signed a letter last week urging state leaders to mandate artificial intelligence and computer science classes as a high school graduation requirement.

The big picture: Louisiana is one of 12 states that already requires students to earn credit in computer science to graduate from high school, per Code.org.

Between the lines: Students who attend high schools that offer a computer science course end up earning 8% higher salaries than those who don't, regardless of career path or whether they attend college, per the Brookings Institution.

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👋 Chelsea here. I spent my Saturday afternoon sampling dozens of mudbugs thanks to an invitation to help judge the Old Metairie Crawfish Fest & Cook-Off.

• It was a blast!

Zoom in: I was worried every crawfish would start to taste the same, but was instead delighted by how much diversity there was across every garlicky, citrusy bite.

• By the end, my lips were tingling, and I was ready for a very cold beer.