Known for his "superhero" skill set at BYU under coach Bronco Mendenhall, Taysom Hill is making waves in the NFL as a versatile and competitive player. "Look, he does so many different things. He's a football player," NFL coach Sean Payton said about Hill. "When his game is over with, and it's a grass field, [his uniform] is gonna be dirty."
Mendenhall said he couldn't remember who it was, exactly. But someone on BYU's staff referred to Hill as a "Thor-terback," and the name immediately stuck because "he's part superhero and part quarterback all in one."
"There's really nothing you could tell me that he's done on the field that would surprise me. He leaps tall buildings in a single bound and he stops locomotives. And he does basically anything physically that I could ever imagine," said Mendenhall, who said it wasn't just Hill's athleticism, but the combination of power and speed, great decision-making and his character as a role model that made the "superhero" idea so fitting.
And now, Mendenhall said, "That is our brand."
"We have a player now in Bryce Perkins that is a little more Flash Gordon than Thor, but it's still the superhero idea. That's what we've been looking for," Mendenhall said. "That's probably the greatest compliment I could pay Taysom, is we want as many of those guys as we can, and he was the one that set the mold."
Payton is likewise enamored with Hill's "total package" skill set. Although he has standout speed for the position, he also has a great deal of power and physicality.
Lead image by Sean Gardner/Getty Images; retrieved from espn.com