What Saints coach Sean Payton is doing with third quarterback Taysom Hill this year might seem revolutionary, or at least evolutionary.
But he apparently wanted to do all the same things year ago a quarterback who was even more of a curiosity.
According to Christopher Dabe of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, former Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow said he had conversations with Payton about having a hybrid quarterback/option/gadget role.
Tebow wasn’t specific about the time frame, just saying it was “back in the day” when he “talked to coach Payton a lot when he was trying to get me to come do that-ish, here.”
Tebow did say they had conversations after he was cut by the Jets in 2012. He went to camp with the Patriots and Eagles, and then went onto television and eventually baseball.
“He did a good job making it clear what he thought,” Tebow said of Payton. “It just wasn’t necessarily in my heart at the time. It was cool. It wasn’t like I was totally against it. Love coach Payton. He’s one of the best coaches out there. For me, I still wanted to pursue being a quarterback and then baseball. Sometimes it’s not that you dislike something. It’s that you have something even more in your heart.”
Tebow’s a big fan of what Hill’s doing with the Saints, but considering a bigger version of a running quarterback in the hands of one of the league’s most creative play-callers does give you a real sense of what-might-have-been.