Taysom Hill expects to be viewed as franchise quarterback

[Mojo Ram]

I have a hard time believing a person with the 1st name "Taysom" could be seriously considered a franchise quarterback.

It just doesn't seem right.

"TAYSUM....!"

 

[Elmgrovegnome]

What an obvious plant of an article, Asshole Face is just trying to get someone to match.

He wasn’t even in consideration for the backup job when Brees went down, it went right to Bridgewater. He’s thrown like what, 15 passes in the NFL and he’s almost 30? Franchise QB my ass, I doubt even he really believes that. He’d be lucky to be a backup QB, he’s a gadget player.

I thought the same thing. Asshole Face would jump on a first round pick if someone offered Hill a contract.

 

[CGI_Ram]

link
Taysom Hill Rumors: Asshole Face 'Secretly Intrigued' by Full-Time Running QB

While the New Orleans Saints want Drew Brees to return in 2020, head coach Asshole Face is reportedly "secretly intrigued" about the potential of moving forward with Taysom Hill.

Jeremy Fowler of ESPN reported Payton could try a running quarterback in a "full-time role" if Brees retires.

Hill is a restricted free agent and is expected to be one of the most interesting names on the open market. The 29-year-old has attempted only 13 NFL passes but has elite athletic ability that's seen him play quarterback, running back and receiver during his stint in New Orleans.

Hill recently said he views himself as a "franchise quarterback" but doesn't know where he'll play next season.

"I definitely view myself as a franchise quarterback," Hill told Rob Maaddi of The Associated Press. "I think as you look at the other questions: Is it New Orleans? Is it somewhere else? As you go into free agency, this is the time that you start to find out how people view you. We haven't gotten into free agency long enough to really know how these guys view me and we'll just handle it as it comes."

Hill is entering free agency with perhaps the best game of his NFL career on the minds of team executives. He connected on a 50-yard pass, rushed the ball four times for another 50 yards and hauled in two passes for 25 yards and a touchdown in the Saints' 26-20 NFC Wild Card Round loss to the Minnesota Vikings last month. While Brees struggled, Hill was arguably the best Saints player on either side of the ball.

Hill's viability as a starting NFL quarterback is, however, more questionable. His NFL passing experience is almost completely limited to gadget plays designed specifically for him. The Saints could have given Hill an extended opportunity to start at quarterback during last season when Brees went out with an injury. They handed the ball to Teddy Bridgewater instead and continued to use Hill sparingly.

While the success of Lamar Jackson likely has teams around the league intrigued at the idea of a do-everything quarterback, Hill turns 30 in August. His resume reads more like a fun luxury item than a player around whom you can build an offense.

That said, all it takes is one team to like Hill enough to give him the chance.

 

[FaulkSF]

Asshole Face if you like him so much, why don't you pay him as a starter?

 

[TXRams86]

Payton is just trying to blow smoke up everyone’s ass so he can get his first round pick off that tender. Trying to hype up a 30 year old QB who’s thrown a couple more passes than Johnny Hekker is just stupid.
Hill isn’t a franchise QB. Payton knows it. Hill should accept it. His next contract is going to be based on everything he does EXCEPT throw the ball.

 

[CGI_Ram]

Is Taysom Hill a starting NFL quarterback? What we know from 15 career passes

The do-it-all asset has made an impact with the Saints as a gadget player. Can he be a good starter, and for which team might it work best?

www.espn.com

Is Taysom Hill a starting NFL quarterback? What we know from 15 career passes

There are few more intriguing offseason storylines than that of New Orleans Saints Swiss Army knife Taysom Hill and his prospects -- not just as a gimmick player but as an NFL quarterback.

Nobody has talked him up more than his coach, Asshole Face, comparing Hill to Steve Young and saying he is "like gold bullion." If anything, the praise is said to be even more effusive inside the building. But Hill has attempted just 15 passesin his NFL career, including the playoffs. To put those numbers into context, the Broncos' Drew Lock attempted 156 as a rookie last season, and we still have no idea about his future. The Giants' Daniel Jones threw 459 passes, and we're not much wiser in his case.

Is Hill, a restricted free agent who the Saints gave a first-round tender, worth pursuing this offseason? Payton obviously sees Hill in practice and during meetings and in multiple settings the rest of us simply aren't given access to, so to a certain degree, we need to acknowledge that he is working with more information on the subject than we are. But it's still worth looking at the 29-year-old's tape to see if there are signs of the potential in which Payton has so much confidence.

Scant data points

To start, let's acknowledge just how little data we have on Hill as a quarterback. He has played almost 1,200 snaps in total the past two seasons, if you include special teams, but just 105 of them came with him lined up at quarterback, and 67 of those snaps still had Drew Brees on the field. Hill lined up as the sole quarterback on the field for just 33 snaps the past two seasons, which is around half a game's worth.

Hill earned a roster spot by doing what Tim Tebow refused to: anything his team asked of him, regardless of how demeaning it would be for a "quarterback." Tebow was a first-round pick and Hill went undrafted, so their outlooks from the get-go would have been vastly different, but Hill was able to carve himself a valuable niche as an athletic do-it-all player well before the team was forced to determine if he was worth a roster spot as a quarterback alone.

As a gadget player, Hill became increasingly valuable and worked his way further and further into the weekly game plan. He played special teams, ran the ball, passed occasionally, caught passes and even blocked as a tight end -- and he did all of it to a pretty high level. In 2019, he saw at least 20 snaps as a quarterback, in the backfield, at tight end, in the slot, split wide and in five different facets of special-teams play. Against the Vikings in the playoffs, Hill accounted for 38% of the team's yards on offense, playing only 23 offensive snaps.

If you want to see how Hill might perform as a true quarterback, though, you need to look at the preseason because that's the only time the Saints have given him an extended look at the position. Sure, in those spots, he is working both with and against backups, but he has at least flashed impressive performances. If we roll all of his NFL passes together, his stat line actually looks pretty encouraging. He has a 65% completion rate to go with 7.7 average yards per attempt. He has tossed seven touchdowns to four interceptions, and he has an overall PFF grade of 74.7.

These aren't numbers that will set the world alight, but they don't contradict the notion that he could be a viable starting quarterback in the future, either.

What's the blueprint?

Adding some extra intrigue to the situation is the performance of Lamar Jackson and the Ravens in 2019. Jackson played at an MVP level because his team was prepared from the outset to build a custom offense around his skill set and tailor everything to his strengths. His ability within that offense made his life easier when it came to things he wasn't as good at, consequently making improvement there much easier to achieve.

If Hill were to have success as a quarterback in the future, it seems likely that it would have to come in similar circumstances, and Payton has already shown a penchant for the creative in crafting various roles for him within the current offense. If an offense were created around Hill's strengths, magnifying the threat of his athleticism and not asking him to replicate what Brees has done so effectively for years, there is nothing we have seen from him in the NFL to suggest that he can't be successful operating it.

The big question: Why go to that trouble? The Ravens did it for Jackson because he is one of the most unique athletes the league has ever seen; he won the Heisman trophy in college and was an extremely productive player at that level. In all honesty, not finding a way to use somebody that talented to the maximum would be negligent.

Hill, on the other hand, never reached that level of performance in college. His best season at BYU in terms of performance earned him an overall PFF grade of 85.3, but it lasted just 349 snaps before a fractured leg ended his campaign, and he was never able to hit that level again before going undrafted in 2017. Although he is an impressive athlete, he very definitely isn't on Jackson's level in that regard.

The Saints might be the only team that would be invested in Hill, simply because when they finally have to deal with the consequences of a Brees-less future, they will also be dealing with salary-cap ramifications and won't have many avenues to take.

Is Hill worth a restricted free-agent offer?

Any team other than New Orleans would need to make a run at Hill as a restricted free agent, which means they would need to pay him and give up draft compensation to secure his services. For that price, you have to wonder if you can be any more confident in Hill's long-term outlook than that of Teddy Bridgewater, whom the Saints turned to when Brees was injured.

Although Hill will be 30 years old by the time the 2020 season rolls around, Bridgewater will be just 27, and his five games starting in 2019 (when the Saints elected to keep Hill in his gadget role and even dialed down his usage) rehabilitated his image as a viable starting quarterback. Bridgewater began to push the ball down the field, and in his final three games, he had 12 deep shots for seven completions and a passer rating of 130.6. He also might not be the answer for a quarterback-needy team, but there is dramatically more data to support that notion than there is for Hill.

The way the league is trending, there is certainly a possibility that Hill can be turned into a game-changing QB if a bespoke offense is built around him. But that still involves a huge gamble that NFL teams are typically not keen on making. For that reason alone, it seems like Hill's future as a starting quarterback is tied to Payton, his greatest hype man, and the Saints in a post-Brees era. And while there isn't a perfect fit outside New Orleans right now, some more QB reps this season under Payton might better set Hill up to hit the market down the road.

 

[CGI_Ram]

I have no idea what the Saints are doing here.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a team value a player like that. I’m not so sure I’d want the Rams to sign him for the league minimum. I’m joking, but barely.

 

[dang]

Asshole Face prefers to be called Sphincter Mouth. he finds it more distinguished.

 

[CGI_Ram]

Details On Taysom Hill's Contract, 2020 Role

Last week, the Saints signed Taysom Hill to a two-year extension worth $21MM ($16MM guaranteed) that will tether him to …

www.profootballrumors.com

Details On Taysom Hill’s Contract, 2020 Role

Last week, the Saints signed Taysom Hill to a two-year extension worth $21MM ($16MM guaranteed) that will tether him to the team through the 2021 season. Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk provides a breakdown of the deal, which features a $1.4MM roster bonus for 2021 that has already become guaranteed and a $10.72MM 2021 salary, $5.72MM of which was guaranteed at signing.

Those details confirm what we already knew: that the Saints are committed to Hill as the successor to Drew Brees in 2021. Hill’s contract, though seemingly rich for a soon-to-be 30-year-old QB who has thrown 13 regular season passes in his pro career, is still modest for a starting quarterback, which New Orleans needs given the dead money charges it will be carrying for Brees for the next few seasons.

Since the Saints have not made their support of Hill a secret, some have wondered why the BYU product did not gamble on himself this year by playing out the season under his first-round RFA tender (worth $4.6MM) and hoping for a franchise tag in 2021. But as Florio observes, if Hill is used more as a RB or WR in 2020, his tag number would come in far lower than the QB tag. Plus, if the salary cap falls in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the non-exclusive tag number — which is driven by the salary cap — would see a corresponding drop.

Speaking of Hill’s usage, Hill himself expects that he will not be used as much on special teams in 2020, as Katherine Terrell of The Athletic tweets. Hill was deployed on 62% of the Saints’ ST snaps in 2019 after an 80% rate in 2018, and that number should continue to decline as Hill’s development as a passer becomes more of a focus. However, we previously heard that New Orleans still plans to utilize his athleticism and versatility to spark the offense.

Hill added that a two-year contract was the best outcome for both sides, and he said negotiations with the Saints began several months ago (Twitter link via Terrell). Other teams did kick the tires on him, but the first-round RFA tender prevented rival clubs from giving him an offer sheet.

The Saints also signed Jameis Winston to guard against the possibility of a Hill injury, but it looks like Winston’s tenure in New Orleans will only last for a season (unless he chooses to re-up as Hill’s backup in 2021). In light of Andy Dalton‘s new contract with the Cowboys, Winston’s modest deal with New Orleans looks like a win for the team.

 

[oldnotdead]

Hill has an NFL caliber arm. The problem is determining how much of his training and practice has been as a developmental QB? Coming in as a rookie he wasn't good at reading defenses, had a mediocre arm with likewise accuracy. He was looked at as a one read and run QB. After watching him since his coming into the league I see some improvement. His arm is better and his accuracy has improved. Overall his mechanics are decent most of the time but I question how good is he at reading defenses? Baker Mayfield has a similar problem. Take his first read away and his inclination is to bail and run or force a bad throw. Hill at this point seems to be at that level. Baker isn't cutting it as a "franchise QB" so IMO Taysom isn't either.

If Taysom can read defenses beyond reads one and two then he might have a shot at being a good QB. But that has yet to be shown. He still has a tendency to bail early. I think a smart team will offer him an average contract with performance escalators related to his development and performance. An average would be in the $7-$8M range. I'm not sure the Saints can afford that. A two year deal at that price range would be good for a starting QB. If the Saints won't pay him that he will probably move on.

This is why the Saints signed Jameis Winston at $1M/yr. Signing Winston sounds like a team accepting that Drew's final year will cost them Hill. Way to go Drew! LOL

 

[jacktheripper85]

The only offer this guy will get to be a franchise QB is from the XFL.

Asshole Face is such a handjob

 

[SteezyEndo]

In the words of Charlie Chaplin. STFU. Why is Taysom Hill a hit on this board?...Bruh.

 

[TexasRam]

Taysom expects to be treated as a franchise QB

 

[FarNorth]

Asshole Face prefers to be called Sphincter Mouth. he finds it more distinguished.

Sphincter Puss works for me.

 

[Elmgrovegnome]

Asshole Face prefers to be called Sphincter Mouth. he finds it more distinguished.

.

I like your version better

 

[InnovatedMind]

God I hate everything about the Saints. Can't wait to kick their a$$ this year.

 

[Memento]

God I hate everything about the Saints. Can't wait to kick their a$$ this year.

We're facing the Bucs this year. Or do you think the Aints will make the playoffs?

 

[InnovatedMind]

We're facing the Bucs this year. Or do you think the Aints will make the playoffs?

I believe we're making the playoffs and we're playing the Saints again... a repeat of 2018... only difference, we demolish them in a blowout, to set a statement.

No confusion this time, who the better team is, AINTS.