Most overrated player on every NFL team in the 2022 season
By Randy Gurzi
New Orleans Saints: Taysom Hill, Gadget Player
Sean Payton has forgotten more about football than most of us will ever learn, but that doesn’t mean everything he does makes sense. For example, the former New Orleans Saints head coach had an unexplainable soft spot for Taysom Hill and continued to force-feed him the ball over the past few seasons.
Payton was adamant that Hill could be a franchise quarterback even though he didn’t get his first start until the age of 30. In an effort to keep him happy while being groomed for the future, the coach would use Hill at quarterback, tight end, H-back, and on special teams.
In this role, he’s recorded 1,183 yards rushing with 16 touchdowns and has 34 receptions for 388 yards and seven scores. The problem is, he fumbled the ball 10 times in 2020 — and many of those fumbles came when the offense was moving and Payton decided to bench future Hall of Famer Drew Brees in order to give Hill a chance to shine.
If that wasn’t bad enough, they’ve also gone out of their way to give Hill arguably the most comically enlarged contract ever. Hill signed a contract that was stated to be a four-year deal worth up to $140 million in 2021 — but then it turned out this wasn’t the actual dollar amount, as they renegotiated his contract, paying him $40 million over four years.
Saints are restructuring QB Taysom Hill’s contract to create cap room. Details are great: it’s a 4-year, $140 million contract extension - but all years are voidable and it’s a mechanism to free up cap space this year, per source. It saves Saints over $7.5M against cap this year.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) March 14, 2021
His contract is also structured in a way that it would be impossible for the new regime to release Hill in 2022, so maybe we will see some more gadget plays where he keeps the ball out of the hands of playmakers such as Michael Thomas and Chris Olave.