Taysom Hill – The NFL’s One-of-a-Kind Weapon, From Pocatello to New Orleans Legend
Nobody Knew What to Call Him – And That Was the Point
Taysom Hill has played quarterback, tight end, running back, fullback, wide receiver, kick returner, punt protector, and gunner on special teams – sometimes in the same game. The NFL has a word for every player on a roster. For Hill, the Saints eventually stopped trying and just wrote “QB/TE” on his official listing, which captures roughly half of what he actually does on Sundays.
The nickname “Human Swiss Army Knife” came from the media, not from Hill himself. He’s never seemed particularly interested in the branding. What he’s interested in is finding a way to get on the field, which is something he’s had to fight for since his first day at Brigham Young.
Pocatello, a Mission to Australia, and a Stanford Scholarship He Never Used
Hill was born August 23, 1990, in Pocatello, Idaho – named, oddly enough, after a construction company that operated in his hometown. He was the youngest of four children. His older brother Dexter died in the spring of 2016, and Hill changed his jersey number from 4 to 7 that fall season to honor him.
At Highland High School, Hill played football, basketball, and track. His senior year, he threw for 2,269 yards and 18 touchdowns and rushed for 1,491 yards and 24 more. He won Idaho Gatorade High School Player of the Year and was an All-State selection. Jim Harbaugh recruited him heavily to Stanford. He committed. Then he went on his two-year LDS mission to Sydney, Australia, returned in January 2011, and found out Stanford didn’t allow incoming freshmen to join the team until June. BYU did. He enrolled at BYU instead.
That decision probably cost him a first-round draft pick. Stanford’s system and recruiting in 2012 might have developed him differently – he’d have been two years younger and injury-free entering the draft. Worth noting because the path he took instead produced one of the stranger and more interesting careers in NFL history, four major injuries included.
Four Years at BYU, Four Season-Ending Injuries
His first college pass was an 18-yard touchdown against Washington State in 2012. Six games in, he suffered a season-ending knee injury against Utah State. He came back in 2013 as the full-time starter and had the kind of game that gets scouts excited: 259 rushing yards and three touchdowns against Texas in a 40-21 win. Against Houston that same year, he put up 417 passing yards, four touchdowns, and added 194 rushing yards. BYU won 47-46.
Then 2014: broken leg. 2015: Lisfranc fracture in the opener against Nebraska, gone for the year, granted a medical redshirt. He returned in 2016, was named the starter on his 26th birthday, and suffered his fourth season-ending injury before the year was out. Four years, four major injuries.
He holds BYU’s single-season and career records for total offense. He went undrafted in 2017. Given the injury history, no team was willing to use a pick on him – which is understandable, though in retrospect several teams would probably trade a mid-round pick to go back and select him.
Green Bay Waived Him. New Orleans Claimed Him the Same Day.
The Green Bay Packers signed Hill as an undrafted free agent in May 2017, then released him at final cuts in September. New Orleans claimed him off waivers immediately. What the Saints saw that Green Bay didn’t is something of an open question. Sean Payton later described having a specific vision for how Hill could be used – not as a quarterback competing for a starting job, but as a chess piece deployed in situations where no defense had prepared for what was coming.
His first NFL season was mostly special teams. He returned kicks, covered punts, made tackles. In Week 4 against Atlanta in 2017, he returned three kicks for 64 yards, rushed three times for 39 yards, and lined up at tight end to block. The following week against the Giants, he completed his first NFL pass – a 10-yard completion on a fake punt. Three weeks after that, against the Vikings on Sunday Night Football, he completed a 44-yard pass to Michael Thomas that set up a touchdown.
The usage expanded every season. By 2020, he was starting at quarterback for the Saints with Drew Brees injured, throwing for multiple touchdowns and running the ball effectively enough that the team went 4-1 in games he started or played heavily under center. New Orleans then did something unusual: in December 2021, they signed him to a four-year, $40 million contract with $21.5 million guaranteed – making him one of the higher-paid backups or hybrid players in the league, with escalators that could push the deal toward $95 million if he became the true starting quarterback.
2023 Was His Career Year, Even If Almost Nobody Called It That
In 2023, Hill played 16 games and put up numbers that would look strange on any other player’s stat line: 81 rushes for 401 yards and four touchdowns, 33 receptions for 291 yards and three more touchdowns, and 6-of-11 passing for 83 yards and a touchdown – a 109.3 passer rating on his limited attempts. He also had career highs in receptions and receiving yards. Under new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, Hill described being used in roles he’d never played before, including lining up as a fullback in a three-point stance during OTAs.
The most remarkable single-game performance came in Week 11 against the Cleveland Browns: 8 catches, 130 rushing yards, 3 touchdowns, 206 scrimmage yards total. He became only the second player in the Super Bowl era to post that specific combination in a game. The first was LaDainian Tomlinson in 2002, which is the kind of comparison that requires a moment to absorb.
Career Stats: The Numbers That Make the Case
Through his first nine NFL seasons, Hill accumulated 2,551 career rushing yards, 2,426 career passing yards, and – after a four-catch game against the Jets in December 2025 – 1,034 career receiving yards. That made him the first player in the Super Bowl era to surpass 1,000 yards in all three categories. The previous comparable player was Frank Gifford, who reached double-digit touchdowns in passing, rushing, and receiving between 1952 and 1964.
His 6.0 career yards per carry ranks second in Saints franchise history. He has 23 career rushing touchdowns, 10 passing touchdowns, and 11 receiving touchdowns – a distribution that belongs to no recognizable position archetype. His 2025 season was limited by his ACL recovery: 52 carries for 114 rushing yards and one touchdown, 11 catches for 91 yards, two completions for 57 yards and a score across 13 games. His worst statistical year since 2018, though context matters – he was coming back from a torn ACL suffered in Week 13 of 2024 against the Rams.
One figure that doesn’t show up in any box score: his 2025 teammates voted him the Ed Block Courage Award winner, given to a player who exemplifies inspiration, sportsmanship, and courage. His teammates voted for him specifically. That tends to mean something different than the awards voted on by the media or the league.
The Swiss Army Knife Tag Is Accurate, But It Undersells the Actual Achievement
Every few years the NFL produces a player who gets described as versatile – a running back who can catch passes out of the backfield, a receiver who occasionally throws a halfback pass, a tight end who lines up in the backfield. What Hill did was different in scope. He wasn’t inserted occasionally into trick packages. He was the package. The Saints built entire offensive game plans around his ability to appear at any alignment, take any kind of snap, and produce in any phase.
In his career he has aligned at quarterback, tight end, fullback, running back, wide receiver, slot receiver, kick returner, kickoff coverage gunner, and punt protector. That last one – punt protector – involves blocking rushers near the punter. Most starters have never done it in their careers. Hill does it on a weekly basis.
Kyle Juszczyk and Cordarrelle Patterson are the closest comparisons people reach for. Juszczyk is an excellent fullback who catches passes; Patterson is an elite return specialist who plays running back. Neither of them has thrown NFL touchdown passes. Neither accumulated 1,000 yards in all three statistical categories. The comparison doesn’t fully hold.
Injuries: The Part of the Story That Deserves a Straight Telling
Four season-ending injuries in college. In the NFL, a torn ACL in Week 13 of 2024 ended his season early – he had eight games played, 23 receptions for 187 yards, 39 carries for 278 yards before the knee gave out against the Rams. He started 2025 on the reserve/PUP list, didn’t appear until Week 5 after the Saints activated him October 4, then suffered a right AC joint sprain in Week 18 against Atlanta, leaving that game in the third quarter.
He’d played 21 regular-season games across those final two seasons combined. Before the injuries, he averaged over 14 games per season. Whether the ACL and its aftermath represent a permanent change in his durability or just a rough two-year stretch is genuinely unclear. He was 35 years old at the end of the 2025 season.
Family, Faith, and the Name on His Jersey
Hill is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and served his mission from 2009 to 2011 in Sydney, Australia. He married Emily Nixon at the Salt Lake Temple in Salt Lake City in 2014. They have two sons: Beau Nixon Hill, born August 2020, and Bennett Taysom Hill, born 2023.
His first name came from Taysom Construction Company, formerly based in Pocatello. The “Mormon Missile” nickname follows logically from his faith and his playing style, though media have used “Human Swiss Army Knife” more consistently since around 2018. Hill’s Instagram bio reads: “Husband, Father, NFL Football Player. Member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” In that order.
He’s spoken publicly about how his faith shapes his response to setbacks – including the four college injuries and the 2024 ACL. Whether that framing is meaningful or a convenient narrative depends on how you read athletes discussing religion. What’s harder to dispute is that very few players survive four major college injuries, go undrafted, and then build a nine-year NFL career that ends with a historically unique statistical achievement. The mechanism that produced the persistence is probably worth taking seriously.
His Contract, His Earnings, and What He’s Worth on the Market
The four-year, $40 million deal signed in December 2021 included $21.5 million guaranteed and an average annual value of $10 million. The contract had escalators structured around him becoming the primary starting quarterback – up to $95 million in total value if those thresholds were hit. He never fully became the starter in the traditional sense, so the escalators never fully kicked in. His estimated career earnings through nine seasons sit around $42.67 million. Net worth estimates from sports finance sites range from $5 million to $10 million, which reflects the difference between gross earnings and what actually accumulates after taxes, agent fees, and spending.
As of the 2026 offseason, he’s an unrestricted free agent. His contract with the Saints expired. Saints GM Mickey Loomis has spoken about Hill’s situation with evident affection and clear uncertainty in the same breath – respectful of everything Hill contributed to the franchise, honest that no commitment has been made.
Fantasy Football: When Hill Was Usable and When He Wasn’t
Hill’s fantasy value over nine years has been one of the stranger things to track. In most platforms he qualifies at tight end, which is a thin position where a player posting 401 rushing yards and four touchdowns plus 291 receiving yards would be a top-12 option. That’s what 2023 looked like. If you rostered him that year, you were getting TE1 production from a player most leagues had available deep in the draft.
The complication: his role shifts based on who else is healthy. When Alvin Kamara is active and playing full snaps, Hill’s carries drop sharply. In 2025, he totaled 52 carries across 13 games – roughly four per game, which doesn’t sustain fantasy-relevant rushing numbers. His target share is even less reliable; he had targets in only six of his 13 games in 2025, catches in four.
The honest fantasy assessment going forward is that his 2026 situation – whether he plays, for whom, and in what role – would need to resolve before he’s usable. If he signs somewhere as a primary wildcat weapon with a creative offensive coordinator, the 2023 version is still somewhere in there. If he returns to a reduced hybrid role on a team that doesn’t scheme for him specifically, the upside isn’t there.
What Comes Next – Retirement, Free Agency, or Something Else
In December 2025, Hill told ESPN’s Katherine Terrell that he’d decide on his future “down the road.” He said it plainly, without drama. At 35, coming off an AC joint sprain capping a season where he already returned from a torn ACL, the path forward is genuinely open.
Reports during the offseason connected him loosely to teams looking for versatile chess pieces – the Detroit Lions were mentioned specifically, as a franchise still adjusting after the departure of offensive coordinator Ben Johnson and looking for creative offensive options. FOX Sports noted the Saints signed UDFA running back CJ Donaldson partly because of his Swiss Army Knife skill set, which reads like an organization beginning to think about life after Hill even while nothing was officially decided.
His legacy in New Orleans is cemented regardless. Nine seasons, the only player in the Super Bowl era with 1,000+ yards each passing, rushing, and receiving, franchise records in yards per carry, a unique offensive role that no other team has successfully replicated with another player. Sean Payton saw something in him in 2017 that Green Bay didn’t. Whatever Hill decides in 2026, that initial bet paid off in ways neither of them could have predicted when he was claimed off waivers for nothing on a September afternoon.
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