Can Taysom Hill’s role keep growing despite the weapons Saints added on offense?

Taysom Hill took reps as the third-string quarterback during two of the Saints’ three minicamp practices. Afterward, he talked about how he’d like to become more involved as a pass catcher as his versatile role continues to evolve.

But the most important thing I gleaned from Hill, coach Dennis Allen and offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael Jr. this summer was that they also plan to keep doing what worked so well with Hill last season c when he averaged a career-high 6.0 yards per carry on a career-high 96 rushing attempts with seven touchdown runs, two TD catches and two TD passes.

That may seem obvious. But it remains one of the great curiosities surrounding the 2023 Saints: Is there still room for Hill to play such a big role on offense now that they have added so much depth at quarterback (Derek Carr, Jameis Winston, Jake Haener); running back (Alvin Kamara, Jamaal Williams, Kendre Miller) and tight end (Juwan Johnson, Foster Moreau)?

“The hope is that we look at last year and just expand on that,” said Hill, who said he kept his weight the same this offseason, unlike years past when his weight would fluctuate depending on whether he was competing for the QB job or expecting to do more blocking as a tight end.

It also helps quite a bit that Hill is fully healthy after he spent last offseason rehabbing from foot surgery to repair a Lisfranc injury.

"I think this year is the first time that we've been able to go back and we've looked at 17 games and looked at rep count, where that was and what I was being asked to do,” Hill said of trying to pinpoint his elusive role. “And so now we can tailor that to what they're asking me to do on the practice field. The hope is that we start to expand that.

"And we'll continue to have these conversations and push the envelope of, ‘Hey, maybe we do this or maybe we put you in this position.’ I think that's kind of where we're at right now.”

Ironically, after years of Hill being pigeonholed as a product of Sean Payton’s imagination, the Saints arguably did a better job of incorporating him into the offense in 2022 after Payton left.

Hill was a driving force behind their wins at Atlanta in Week 1, at Cleveland in frigid temperatures in Week 16 and vs. Seattle in Week 5 when his epic performance of three TD runs (including a 60-yarder) and a TD pass earned him his first NFC Offensive Player of the Week honor.

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The Saints went 6-0 when Hill had at least seven carries in 2022. They are 15-1 all-time when he reaches that threshold, including seven of his nine starts at QB from 2020-2021. Obviously that’s a bit of a “chicken vs. egg” statistic, since it’s easier to keep feeding Hill when the Saints aren’t playing from behind. Still, it’s impossible to ignore how effective Hill can be as a runner when the Saints use him properly.

Hill has averaged 5.5 yards per carry in his career and never less than 5.3 in a season. At two separate points last year, Nick broke down how unstoppable Hill is on QB power runs and how hard it is for teams to defend the Saints when Hill is under center with five receivers spread wide.

A lot of Hill’s usage last season was out of necessity, however, since the rest of the offense became so lackluster in the wake of injuries to key players like Winston, receivers Michael Thomas and Jarvis Landry and a series of offensive linemen. At one point, the Saints flirted with the concept of rotating Andy Dalton and Hill as quarterbacks throughout a win over the Rams.

So Carmichael is the first to admit that he needs to be even more cognizant of keeping Hill involved now that the offense appears so much deeper.

“I think from my perspective, I have to do a better job of getting him involved in the pass game as a receiver,” Carmichael said. “I think when you go back and look at what he did as a quarterback, we felt pretty good about his production. I think that’s all kind of — we’ll see how it unfolds — but there’s obviously a very similar vision for Taysom going forward. That doesn’t go away. But me doing a better job of, ‘Hey, he’s at tight end, he’s at receiver. Let’s get him involved in the pass game.’”

It seems like that’s music to Hill’s ears.

Hill mentioned more than once during a minicamp media session about how he’d like to see his role expand in the passing game. Although the Saints officially moved Hill into the tight end room for the first time last season, he wound up catching just nine passes for 77 yards and two TDs.

Again, that was partly out of necessity since he became so much more important as a change-of-pace quarterback. However, it’s obvious the Saints didn’t fully tap into the potential of the 6-foot-2, 221-pounder, who caught seven TD passes back in 2019 (including the playoffs) even when he had virtually no experience as a tight end or receiver.

“I think that’s the kind of stuff that hasn't been explored a ton with me here,” Hill said. “The throwing stuff or the running, we've been doing that for a long time, and that's really natural for me. I think running routes and catching balls and stuff, that was a foreign thing for me. And I also think because of that, we haven't done a ton of it. There's some opportunities that we just haven't explored yet. So, as I look at next season, I think the hope and expectation is that it expands a little bit.”

Carr certainly seems game. He joked during minicamp that, “You throw him a pass, and he throws it back just as good.”

“You get the ball to him, and he's faster than my truck,” Carr added. “He runs through and he runs over a couple of guys, and he gets the first down. You watch it on tape, and it happens over and over and over again.”

Hill also mentioned that he might add a new meeting room to his class schedule at times this year — working with running backs coach Joel Thomas.

“Maybe hearing how he teaches and coaches these guys to read different fronts,” said Hill, still eager to learn new tricks as he heads toward his seventh NFL season, his 33rd birthday in August and the second year of his four-year, $40 million contract extension.

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Hill’s role might just remain a work in progress in perpetuity. And as Nick said in our recent top-20 roster rankings, he might be the most massively overpaid and massively underrated player in the league at the same time.

Regardless, the Saints seem to have the most important part of the equation figured out: Hill will be a factor.

“He’s gonna be getting quarterback work. He’s gonna be getting tight end work. He’ll be a move guy for us. We’ll have some of our quarterback run stuff that we do with him. We’ll work with him in the passing game,” Allen said. “He's a weapon offensively for us that can do a lot of different things. So our thought is to get him involved in a lot of different areas.”