New Orleans Saints quarterback Taysom Hill has said he hasn’t thought about what might happen if he doesn’t win the starting quarterback job, and perhaps that’s something that he gleaned from his mentor Drew Brees.
Brees often preached the importance of staying in the moment and not looking ahead, and he’d repeat yearly that his mindset never changed even if circumstances around him did. Brees wasn’t at the Saints facility for opening week of training camp, but he might as well have been when Hill and Jameis Winston did their first interviews with the media. In some ways, Brees was speaking through them.
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“I think every year is the same for me. This year, there’s a competition between Jameis and I and who’s going to play, but the expectation for myself never changes,” Hill said. “My routine, the things that I’m consistently working on. That sort of stuff doesn’t change from year to year. And so the way that I’ve approached this year has been different because my role is different. But from a competition standpoint, what I’m doing and how I’m working is all the same.”
But Hill did make one major concession this year, and that’s to go all out for the position he wants the most. It feels like a “quarterback or bust” mindset, and everything he’s done this year reflects that.
He specifically targeted certain muscle groups in his offseason training program to give him more of the body type of a quarterback and less of a hybrid tight end, keeping his lower body routine the same but emphasizing work on his shoulder muscles.
“Backside shoulder (was) a bigger emphasis and so forth,” he said.
He came to camp noticeably slimmed down and mentioned that he purposely arrived lighter as well.
“I think as a thrower it’s important to have a stronger backside than it is your frontside shoulder, and it’s natural to work your frontside muscles than it is your backside,” he said. “I can tell you for me historically when I get sore it’s all your (decelerating) motions from taking so many reps and throwing so many balls. So throughout my career here, I was always trying to find that balance of being strong enough to do what I was going to be asked to do, but still be able to throw a ball and so forth. So there was definitely a transition there.”
But while Hill might not be talking about the “what-ifs,” it’s certainly intriguing. If Hill wins the job, then Winston simply goes to the bench like last year. Winston is a quarterback and has never been anything else. Just what Hill is ultimately supposed to be is a little more cloudy.
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There are few quarterbacks like Hill, who was given a new contract in 2020 with $16 million guaranteed to lure him back with the promise that he’d have a chance to replace Brees. That’s cheap for a starting quarterback but expensive for any backup who isn’t a benched starter. Outside of the money aspect, it wouldn’t make sense for the Saints to be content in losing one of their most unique players to the bench.
But the differences in training and his body type do make one wonder how Hill would fit as the No. 2 or No. 3 quarterback if it comes to that. We’ve seen some scenarios play out before. Hill became the No. 2 quarterback in 2019 when Teddy Bridgewater was filling in for an injured Brees, in a stint that caused his special teams snaps to plummet but continued to give him a mostly normal role in the offense (outside of the first two games without Brees, where he played only a few snaps.)
Last season, even before he was called to take the starting quarterback job, his usage in the offense was up and his special teams play down. Because he’s presumably stopped splitting his time between several rooms, Hill’s special teams days seem mostly behind him.
It’s not as if his body type has radically shifted, but it’s fair to wonder how Hill’s weight loss and new training programs could affect how his body would absorb the pounding taken from snaps at tight end or running back. Still, it’s hard to imagine Sean Payton wouldn’t come up with a new way to use him, even if it’s not the way we’ve seen over the past four seasons.
That’s where the development of Ian Book could factor into the Saints’ decisions down the road. Book has been swapping third- and fourth-team snaps with Trevor Siemian and he’s shown some flashes in limited action.
Book’s development could throw an interesting wrench into things if the Saints feel he’s able to take on backup duties. That could put them in a situation like 2019 and 2020, where there were three capable quarterbacks on the roster. If he’s not ready, more caution would likely have to be used.
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“I love him,” Winston joked. “He has to be more prepared, especially on his rookie performances. He can’t get called out in the team meeting and not be able to prepare, like he has to be ready to sing his (rookie) song. But no, all jokes aside, Ian has been doing really good. He’s been very receptive. I love our quarterback room. Even with Trevor, Taysom, all of us have great relationships, man, we’re all building to help each other out. Because the thing is about this team, right, as quarterbacks we have to put the team in front of all of us. We all have our individual goals, right, we all have individual accomplishments that we want to accomplish on the field. But collectively, we want to be able to make the team go and I think we’re together and I think we’re all doing that.”
But for now, with weeks to go before a clear winner emerges, the quarterbacks don’t seem to be thinking about those what-ifs. Right now, it’s just one very different quarterback room than last year, with Brees’ lessons still resonating.
“I love working with Jameis, he works really hard. I think he’s really smart,” Hill said. “He has got a lot of experience playing the position. And so I think the culture here has been no different. I’d say Drew was a great mentor and allowed all of us to pick his brain and he’s obviously not here, but between the four of us in our QB room, we’re always working together, giving feedback, if someone makes a good decision, we certainly let them know that we thought it was a good decision and good throw. And if there are questions, there are plenty of times where I might make a throw, but I want to see what happened on the backside of that, I’ll come back and I will ask Jameis or Trevor or Ian and so forth with the coaches. We have got a really, really good room and a group that really works well together.”
(Photo of Taysom Hill: Stephen Lew / USA Today)
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