What New Orleans Saints could get from Josh Hill

By Kevin Parvizi | Mar 25, 2015

The New Orleans Saints didn’t have any problems sending Jimmy Graham to the Seattle Seahawks in a move that netted them a first-round pick and an All-Pro caliber center while also hurting an offense that underperformed last season. Graham was most likely the second-best player on the entire team, and all we’ve heard since then is talk about a “culture shift” in New Orleans as well as hype for his former backup Josh Hill.

Barring the addition of a top tight end prospect in this year’s draft, Hill is penciled in as the Saints starting tight end, and Sean Payton has been busy heaping high praise on the shoulders of a player who has just 30 career targets in two seasons but has also shown enough upside to give Payton’s praise some weight.

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The Saints head coach’s latest effusive plaudit for his second-year TE came today, as the New Orleans Times-Picayune’s Larry Holder tweeted that Payton stated the team values Hill “a lot”. Per Holder, Payton also plugged a couple of other players, so perhaps it’s just PR from a head coach trying to sell the rest of us on an offense sans Graham and Kenny Stills.

And yet the praise for Hill contains plenty of legitimacy, since he’s been the team’s most-praised player ever since Graham left. Would the Saints have been so willing to deal Graham if they had no confidence in Hill? Most of us see Payton’s praise for Hill as hyperbolic, but hyperbole stems from a grain of truth.

So what do the Saints see in Hill? For starters, he’ll be just 25 when the season starts, and that’s extremely young at the tight end position, so he’s in a position to have a third-year breakout campaign if given the chance. With the adulation Hill has received from the organization, nobody should doubt the idea that the Saints will give him as many chances as feasibly possible to be a big part of the offense, though he most likely won’t be the only piece at TE.

Hill is 6’5″, weighs 229 pounds, and runs a 40 in the early or mid 4.6 range, so the measurables are there for him to be a big weapon in the offense. Through just 30 targets in his limited playing time as Graham’s backup, Hill has managed to establish himself as a dangerous red zone weapon. In just 20 targets last season, he hauled in five touchdowns, including two touchdowns on two receptions in Week 15 against the Chicago Bears.

He turned those 20 total targets into 14 receptions for 176 yards, yielding, per Advanced Football Analytics, a 70% catch rate and an excellent average of 8.8 yards per target.

With a sample size that small, it’s impossible to come up with any major conclusions about his pass-catching ability. The only conclusion we can come up with is that he has the potential to be another monster in the red zone, and his numbers certainly look promising on paper in that small dosage of targets.

Even his blocking is difficult to evaluate, but it is telling that by far most of his snaps came as a run blocker. Per Pro Football Focus, he took 169 snaps as a run blocker, 83 running routes, and 41 staying in to block on passing downs last season. It shows that the Saints are comfortable with him blocking, though it is important to note than Benjamin Watson, who is currently the No. 2 TE, received more snaps in the running game and considerably more snaps overall.

Sep 21, 2014; New Orleans, LA, USA; New Orleans Saints tight end Josh Hill (89) against the Minnesota Vikings during the first half of a game at Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

Josh Hill was undrafted out of Idaho State in 2013, so the fact that he’s turned into someone capable of starting in this league is a huge win for the Saints. Nobody is taking Payton’s words at face value, and that’s good, since it’s important to have tempered expectations of what Hill can do.

He has more than enough speed for his size and has shown quiet production in limited opportunities with a copious amount of touchdowns, but it’s much more likely for him to be a solid starter than a true star at the position.

That’s not a ground-breaking statement by any means, but I think we need to remind ourselves that the New Orleans Saints are “merely” hoping for Hill to be a good starter and a legitimate weapon in their passing attack. What they want him to do is move the chains, score touchdowns, block at a respectable level, and show enough speed to make defenses respect him.

Doing all of those things would make him a very valuable part of the offense, so Payton’s self-professed love for Hill shouldn’t be exaggerated. He has the potential to be a high-impact player, but it’s more likely that he’ll succeed as the main part of a TE tandem of sorts (likely with Watson, who played much better in 2013).

Next: Mock Draft: Saints steal a top pass rusher

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