At 34 years old, Saints star Taysom Hill is a freak of nature. The data proves that. (2024)

Everyone’s got a story, and Adam Prentice’s begins on his first day as a member of the New Orleans Saints.

This was in 2021, when Hurricane Ida forced the team to move its operation to TCU’s campus in Fort Worth, Texas. Prentice just had been claimed by the Saints off waivers, and after going through his first practice with his new teammates, he went to lift weights.

“And I remember, across the TCU weight room, I saw this guy squatting at least 500 pounds — probably more than that,” Prentice said. “And I was thinking, ‘Who the heck is doing this? We’ve got a game this week.’ ”

Then it dawned on him. The player beneath the bending squat bar was the guy who spent that entire training camp competing for the starting quarterback job.

“Oh,” he remembered thinking, “it’s Taysom.”

Everyone’s got a story about Taysom Hill, and most of them sound apocryphal. But as crazy as the stories sound, the wildest part about them is they are almost certainly true.

Ask Dr. Matt Rhea, now in his third season as the Saints' director of sports science. His work is governed by hard numbers and the truths they represent. Part of his job involves tracking the entire roster across 10 metrics — some based on on-field tracking data, some from the weight room — that account for a near full spectrum of athletic performance.

The numbers are usually predictable along positional lines. The offensive and defensive lines crush the power and strength figures. The receivers and defensive backs lead the pack in speed and acceleration.

And then there is the 34-year-old, 234-pound unicorn who has defied the concept of a position both on the field and in the data. Hill ranks among the Saints’ top 10 in nine of the 10 performance metrics, and he’s top 20 in the other. Nobody else on the roster is top 10 in more than three categories.

“So he's literally great at just about everything,” Rhea said.

"Literally Great at Just About Everything" might as well be the title for a future Hill biopic. His most identifiable trait is that he does not have just one. His claim to NFL fame is that he has played every offensive skill position at a high level — not to mention he’s been a core special-teamer with a punt block and a 47-yard kick return on his résumé.

So much time has been wasted on trying to define or limit Hill's versatility. For years, people have either waxed poetic about his uniqueness or dismissed him as a “gadget” sideshow who was too experimental for their taste. Very little time has been expended on understanding exactly how Hill does everything he does.

The answer lies in the data.

And since we’re on the topic of crazy stories, Hill in 2024 might be primed for the biggest season of his career at an age when most NFL skill players are well into their physical decline. Hill knows his age, but he also knows his body. He feels good, strong, fast — and Rhea’s numbers back him up.

“The data suggests that, in fact, some of these numbers are still getting better,” Hill said.

* * *

Saints players and coaches often seem exhausted by trying to describe Hill’s talents. This has been going on for years, and people are running out of things to say.

Just last week, Saints coach Dennis Allen responded to a version of the question he has heard many times before by saying this: “How many football players have you guys seen that are like Taysom Hill?”

The answer, for most living people, is nobody.

Here is the complete list of NFL players in the Super Bowl era with 2,000 career passing yards, 2,000 career rushing yards and 700 career receiving yards:

Taysom Hill.

One has to go back to the 1940s and '50s to find similar statistical lines.

And, no offense to the others to accomplish this feat — Hall of Famer Charley Trippi and Bob “Hunchy” ho*rnschemeyer — but they probably weren’t doing stuff like this:

“So we have (a ‘1080’) sprint machine,” Rhea said. “We basically attach a tether to (the players), and I can add weight and just progress resistance until it slows them down enough that power drops. It's just a progressive test. Fifteen hundred watts is a really good score. Most of our guys are 1500-2000 (watts). Taysom is 2,800.

“... Most guys are ending at about 30 kilos, which is 50, 60 pounds. I went up to 90 kilos with Taysom, and he's still improving. I've literally run out of resistance to keep testing. I don't even have machines that are good enough to test him. Literally off the charts.

“So in that sense, he has the strength and power of our linemen and the speed of our running backs and the acceleration of our receivers. He could perform at any of those positions, when it comes to our data. And then he's got the IQ of a quarterback. So it's really incredible.”

* * *

While on the topic of numbers, last season Hill set career highs with 114 touches and 692 yards from scrimmage.

What happens if those opportunities increase by, say, 50%?

What if, at 34 years old, the Saints finally decide to take the governor off of Hill?

Since 2018, when New Orleans started deploying Hill as a do-it-all weapon on offense, he has appeared in 96 games, counting the playoffs. He has received 10-plus touches in 15 of those games, and in them the Saints are 13-2.

Klint Kubiak seemed to notice.

The Saints revamped their offense this offseason, hiring Kubiak as their new offensive coordinator. During one of Hill’s first practices, Kubiak had him lining up at fullback. Then at tight end. Then both as a slot and outside receiver. Then, in the preseason, as a lead running back. For good measure, the quarterback run plays are still in the playbook.

Then the plays started to unfold, and they were ending with the ball in Hill’s hands. A lot.

Allen said he’s excited to see Hill “through a new lens,” but that doesn’t really get to the point. The lens is going to be similar, if not the same. The Saints have lined Hill up all over the field for years. The biggest change may just be a matter of volume.

“Hopefully we can get a little bit more out of him than what we’ve been able to get to this point,” Allen said. “... He’s unique. From a physical standpoint, I don’t see a declining physical skill set at 34 years old.”

* * *

“I have always been a big believer in the weight room.”

Hill said this matter-of-factly, in his usual understated tone. In the classical sense of the derogatory term, Hill is not a “meathead.” That would imply that he is all brawn and no brain, and that is far from the truth.

But then he goes over to the squat rack and all bets are off. It’s time to move several hundred pounds. Some people don’t even want to be around him while he's at it.

“For him to be on that squat bar, that’s not it for me,” tight end Juwan Johnson said. “I don’t even like looking. Like, that looks painful to me. So I try to stay away from Taysom in the weight room.”

“That dude is a juggernaut,” Prentice said.

Hill considers weightlifting exercises such as the squat as a simple equation. The harder he can push into the ground, the more power and speed he can generate. That, to him, makes sense in terms of translating the weight room to the football field.

While Rhea pores over the numbers, Hill often goes by feel. But those two differing viewpoints have converged the last couple of years.

Rhea plans Hill’s regimen, and Hill follows it precisely. Through Rhea, Hill has learned what days he should be lifting, at what times he should be lifting and when he should be focusing on strength (think: brute force) versus power (think: explosion). All of it is calculated ahead of time with the hope of yielding maximum results.

But Hill has a habit of breaking the equation.

When Rhea observes his players lifting weights, he tracks their movement speed to dial in the amount of weight they’re pushing. If a player is moving at 0.2 meters per second, they’re about to fail and the weight is too heavy. At 0.4 meters per second, they’re approaching their max.

“The hard thing about training Taysom is he'll be up in the 0.6 to 0.8 meters per second range, which tells me the weight's way too light for a strength session,” Rhea said. “So I'll increase it and he'll stay at 0.8. I'll increase it more. It stays at 0.8."

Call it the “one more” paradox.

“He will tell me, ‘This is your last one.’ But it’s never my last one,” Hill said. “I always end up doing more. … When my speed gets to a certain level, he tells me I’m done. But he’s always guessing, so I always end up doing a couple more sets than what he says.”

The data isn’t there just for fun or for Hill to compete against. It serves a purpose.

One, Hill never feels vulnerable when he’s lifting weights — the numbers exist to tell him something is within his range and is safe to attempt. And two, he is able to go back and see how he compares against himself.

“There’s no secret, right? I just turned 34,” Hill said. “When you start to get to a certain age, it’s — I know how I feel, but it’s nice to be able to go and talk to Doc and say, ‘Tell me what my numbers were from three years ago, what were they last year, and what am I doing right now?’ ”

If Hill were a regular athlete, he would almost certainly see a sharp decline between his numbers now compared to three years ago when Rhea came on staff.

In Rhea’s opinion, the peak age for male athletes is 28 years old. After that age, the nervous system is the first thing that starts to go, and because of that, speed and power typically start to decline as athletes hit 29, 30 and beyond.

“He's still improving power; his speed is still the same as it was four or five years ago, so he's not declining in areas that he should be declining, and he's still improving in areas where generally we are fighting just to hold on,” Rhea said. “He takes such good care of his body that — I don't think he's a normal 34-year-old, but even as an abnormal 34-year-old, this stuff is still (something you don’t see).”

* * *

Rhea has a Hill story, too. Lots of them, probably, but this one stuck out because it was recent. While the team was in Southern California for training camp, Hill positioned himself under the bar and proceeded to squat 685 pounds.

“Which is just unbelievable,” Rhea added.

Or, rather, it should be unbelievable. But the reality is that isn’t even Hill’s maximum. It is just as far as Rhea is willing to let him go.

The Saints use a system called the EliteForm Lift Tracker, which uses motion capture cameras to track the athlete as he's lifting the weight. For Rhea’s purposes, it is mostly used to track the speed of the lift in meters per second. But he can also take the weight and the speed to predict what the actual max is.

Hill’s is 750 pounds.

“I'm not letting him go up that high,” Rhea said.

There is a limit to what Hill can do. It’s just that nobody has been willing to test it yet.