New Orleans Saints QB Taysom Hill looked great on the stat sheet — and pretty darned good at times on the field — while leading the team to a 24-9 victory over the Atlanta Falcons and upping the team’s record to 8-2 in Week 11. That performance vindicates Sean Payton’s decision to start Hill over Jameis Winston while Drew Brees is on injured reserve, and it also proves that Hill really is a potential franchise quarterback, right?
NFL Recap knows a one-game (or maybe two or three-game) wonder when we see one, and it sure looks to us like Payton and the Saints are playing a very dangerous game of smoke and mirrors while trying to manufacture a few victories behind the polarizing Hill.
Saints QB Taysom Hill sputtered in his first four possessions, but the Saints defense held the Falcons (playing without Julio Jones for much of the afternoon after he left the game early with a groin injury) to three field goals and a 9-3 lead. A 45-yard Hill completion to Emmanuel Sanders that looked like a video game glitch — the ball was so underthrown that it appeared to have caromed off the Superdome roof, and Sanders fielded it like a punt — set up a three-yard Alvin Kamara touchdown run to give the Saints a 10-9 lead before halftime.
The Saints then took control of the game as the second half fell into a pattern: Their defense forced a Falcons three-and-out, and Hill punctuated ball-control drives with rushing touchdowns. Even when Taysom Hill fumbled at the end of a long run to give the Falcons a chance to claw their way back into the game (and Julio limped onto the field for a clutch fourth-down conversion, then limped off), Janoris Jenkins intercepted a Ryan pass to squash a rally before it could really start.
Hill finished 18-of-23 passing for 233 yards, with 10 rushes for 51 yards and two touchdowns, while Michael Thomas caught nine passes on 12 targets for 104 yards. The Saints defense held the Falcons to 248 yards of offense and sacked Ryan eight times.
Hill, a 30-year old, fourth-year Wildcat/Slash type who is an undiscovered Lamar Jackson upgrade to some and a methadone version of Tim Tebow to others, certainly looked like a “real quarterback” on Sunday. He looked better than Carson Wentz, for example, though a drunk who found a football in a dumpster after an all-day tailgate party could look better than Wentz right now.
Taysom Hill was accurate when targeting Thomas in the 15-20 yard range and even had a touchdown bomb to Thomas nullified by a penalty. His running ability forced Falcons linebackers to stay at home when Hill was in the pocket, setting up some easy throws over the middle. Ironically, Hill’s worst pass was his longest pass: That fluky Sanders catch looked like the sort of thing that fooled Tebow’s fans into thinking biblical forces were at play, but it doesn’t really reflect how Hill played for most of the afternoon.
That said, the Saints QB was executing an obviously scaled-back game plan. Time and again, Payton sent a sixth lineman on the field and called some variation on a play-action pass to Thomas, working the middle of the field. If Thomas wasn’t open, Hill either just kept looking for Thomas, took off running (often for a minimal gain), or took a sack.
Mix in some end-arounds, direct snaps to Alvin Kamara, swing passes to Latavius Murray that turned into long gains and pass interference penalties to extend drives, and Hill befitted greatly from facing one of the NFL’s weaker defenses on a day when his own defense clamped down on a shorthanded opponent. If Hill was required to find a second read regularly or needed to keep pace in a shootout, Sunday’s result would have been very different.
Was Payton right to start Hill instead of Winston? Probably. Payton likely wagered that a stripped-down game plan and the threat of some options would be all he needed to beat the Falcons, so it wasn’t worth the risk of one of Winston’s legendary multi-turnover meltdowns.
Does this mean Taysom Hill is a future franchise quarterback and all of his hecklers are wrong? Quite the opposite. When a 30-year old who has been in the NFL for four years needs the kind of game plan a coach might bust out for P.J. Walker or Jake Luton to score 24 points against a second-tier opponent, it’s a pretty good sign that he’s not a future franchise quarterback, but the sort of change-up backup who can get you through a couple of starts.
That’s all the Saints QB needs to be in 2020. The questions now become whether he’s better at reading defenses and making decisions than he looked on Sunday now that opponents have more film on him and whether Payton is just fooling his opponents with his clever game-planning or fooling himself in a way that could impact the Saints’ post-Brees future as well.
What’s next for Taysom Hill and the Saints?
A three-game road trip to visit the Denver Broncos, Atlanta Falcons, and Philadelphia Eagles could result in three more wins built on sacks, turnovers, three-and-outs, and a keep-it-simple approach on offense. By then, Taysom Mania could be a thing. NFL Week 11 Recap cautions you not to get sucked into it.
The Saints host the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 15, but perhaps they will get a healthy Brees in time for Christmas.