Taysom Hill's run with the Saints is over, and it didn't take long for his old head coach to come calling. Denver's Sean Payton confirmed the Broncos will explore signing Hill as a free agent, reuniting the two after they spent 2017-21 together in New Orleans turning Hill into one of the strangest and most effective weapons in football.
For anyone who missed the Saints years, Hill was never a normal tight end. Payton lined him up at quarterback, running back, receiver and special teams, sometimes all in the same drive, and turned him into a matchup nightmare defenses never fully solved. He signed as an undrafted free agent in 2017 and became a Payton system staple for the better part of a decade, so this isn't some cold free-agent flier -- it's a guy Payton already knows exactly how to deploy.
The fit in Denver is obvious on paper. The Broncos are sitting on over $37 million in cap space, which makes a modest one-year deal an easy swing, and Payton already has a mobile, improvisational quarterback in Bo Nix running his offense. Add a 36-year-old Swiss Army knife who can line up anywhere and create chaos, and fans are already sketching out the gadget-package possibilities.
Bo Nix + Taysom Hill read option would go kind of insane tho
That's the fun version of this. The complicated version is that Hill turns 36 later this month and his last stretch in New Orleans was banged up, with multiple significant injuries chipping away at his snap count. Payton isn't pretending otherwise -- he's framed this as an exploration, not a done deal, and said he expects to sit down with Hill soon to actually talk it through.
Still, the history here matters. Payton doesn't hand out gadget-player trust easily, and he built an entire offensive wrinkle around Hill for years in New Orleans. If he's willing to go find out what's left in the tank, that's a signal Denver sees real value in a Nix-Hill package, even in a smaller, more situational role than Hill's Saints prime.