BakoSaint

This article has some good basic facts but misses obvious implications:

https://saintswire.usatoday.com/2023...XFNnuH_xFxiexg

Essentially Taysom Hill would count as a bona fide QB per the rule given his past experience and his snaps. But the Saints could have argued he was not, and kept him at TE who ran a few wildcat snaps, since the NFL would not insist for example that Edelman has to be a bona fide QB since he played it in college. Instead just as the new rule came out, the Saints designated Hill a QB not a TE.

The rule is that you can use an inactive QB as an emergency 3rd QB if you have exactly 2 active QBs, not 1 or 3.

By declaring Hill as a QB, it means if Carr, Winston, and Hill are all active, we can't use Haener as an emergency QB, because we already have 3 QBs active. So making Hill a QB likely loses us flexibility with using Haener as an emergency QB.

We would not want to use Hill as an emergency QB because it would mean he has to be inactive barring injuries and we are paying him too much for him to inactive. Also the emergency QB can't contribute on special teams etc they can only play QB.

The only way declaring Hill a QB makes any sense with the new rule is if we will make Carr and Hill the only 2 active QBs on most game days, with Winston (or Haener) as the emergency QB. Winston could still be the #2 QB on the ultimate depth chart, but if Carr went down mid-game we would have to go with Hill for the rest of the game unless Hill went down too. Winston could start the next game if Carr is still out. This would give us an extra active roster spot every game.

I can't see any other logical explanation. If we didnt plan to do this, declaring Hill a QB and giving up the argument that he is primarily a TE means that we give up the ability to use Haener as an emergency QB (unless we make Winston or Hill inactive).

This podcast guy was thinking the same thing I am except I think he misses something. He says we could go into some games with just Carr and Hill active and Winston as the emergency QB and go into other games with Carr and Winston active and Haener as the emergency QB but I interpret the rule differently. I think once we declare Hill a bona fide QB which he has to be to count as our second QB, then if we have Carr, Winston, and Hill active we have 3 bona fide QBs and can't use Haener or any other emergency QB. Thats my interpretation of the rule. I guess an alternate interpretation would be that we could change Hill from a QB to TE on a game to game basis, but I dont think the NFL would buy that, it seems an incredible stretch to argue that one game a player is your #2 QB and a bona fide QB but the next game he is a TE who doesn't count but you still want to give him wildcat snaps, and then the next game you want to call him your #2 QB again. I think that by declaring Hill a QB we can't have Carr, Winston, and Hill active and still use an emergency QB, but we can have Carr and Hill active and use Winston or Haener as the emergency QB.