Knowing there would be bad news regarding the knee injury Taysom Hill sustained Sunday didn't make it any less of a gut punch for the New Orleans Saints on Monday.
Hill, one of two players in NFL history with at least 25 rushing touchdowns, 10 rushing touchdowns and 10 passing touchdowns, is expected to miss the rest of the season with a suspected torn ACL. He sustained the injury on a run play with 4:49 left in the Saints' 21-14 loss to the Rams in the Caesars Superdome.
"Taysom's got a knee injury, looks like it's going to be season-ending for him, unfortunately," Saints interim head coach Darren Rizzi said. "I think he'll probably get a second opinion on some of the stuff but looks like it'll be season-ending."
Hill suffered four season-ending injuries as a quarterback in college at BYU – a knee in 2012, fractured leg in '14, lis franc fracture in '15 and hyper-extended elbow in '16 – but found his NFL niche as a multi-positional player who played 16 games in five of the previous six years.
He started all eight games played this year, and totaled 278 rushing yards and six touchdowns on 39 carries, 187 yards on 23 catches and completed two of four passes for 21 yards, with no touchdowns and an interception.
He was named NFC Offensive Player of the Week for his performance against Cleveland on Nov. 17 – 138 rushing yards and three touchdowns on seven carries, eight catches for 50 yards and an 18-yard completion. He also returned a kickoff for 42 yards.
"I look at Taysom, I don't know that I can compare him to anybody else that I've ever coached," said Rizzi, who was New Orleans' special teams coordinator from 2019 until he was named interim coach Nov. 4.
"There's not a guy that comes to mind that has been able to do all the different things he's been able to do just in one game, forget about his career. You've got a guy that's played PP (punt protector), rush and blocks punts, returns kicks – and I haven't even gotten to offense yet. (He'll) tackle people, get them on the ground, he's been a kick coverage guy, he's on our onside kickoff team, he's a backup long snapper, he's our backup holder – all the different roles that he plays, I don't have anybody that comes to mind.
"It's a big loss. It's not going to take one person to fill that role, it's going to take multiple people to fill that role because he's so multidimensional."
Additionally, on offense Hill was listed as a tight end but also took snaps at running back, quarterback, receiver and fullback.
"It means everybody else has to step up," Rizzi said. "He fills so many roles, so there's going to be a lot of different guys that are going to have to be a part of the solution.
"We'll start getting hopefully a couple of healthy bodies back here – we're going to open the (21-day) window this week with (running back) Kendre Miller, (receiver) Bub Means is a guy hopefully we'll get back this week. We'll open up his 21-day window, looks like.
"And other guys who have been supporting cast these last few weeks – we've done a good job these last few weeks of getting a lot of different guys involved, and it's going to have to remain the same. It's hard to sit here and tell you that you can replace Taysom; you can't.
"He's a phenomenal person, player, leader, captain, all those different things. It's a big loss but, all we can do is everybody else just step up."
ALMOST MILLER TIME: Miller injured his hamstring the first day of training camp and re-injured it in the second of the two games he played this season – on Oct. 27, against the Chargers. Rizzi said he'll remain open-minded about the second-year player, a third-round pick who has played in 10 of a possible 29 games entering Sunday.
"When I took over a few weeks ago I tried to give everybody a clean slate," Rizzi said. "Kendre and I met the first day that I took over and we had a great conversation and I told him just that: I told him he had a clean slate moving forward and I'm going to judge based on what he does from that day moving forward. His thing is going to be consistency and staying healthy.
"It's your job to prove (negative perceptions) wrong and when you do come back, we've got to make sure you're 100 percent healthy, No. 1. No. 2, we 100 percent know what we're doing offensively and that's going to be for him to prove. It's all there in front of him."
SALDIVERI UPDATE: Left guard Nick Saldiveri also suffered a knee injury in Sunday's game and had to be carted off the field.
"He's got a couple of different aspects of his as well, may or may not be season-ending," Rizzi said. "We'll have to wait and see and make a decision on that."
