Taysom Hill 2.0, Tommy Stevens, was a player the New Orleans Saints may not have wanted to draft.
While they may have wanted to sign him and bring him aboard given their success with Hill, the Saints didn’t have a pick after their last selection of Adam Trautman in the fourth round. Meaning, to snag Stevens, the Mississippi State signal-caller, they needed to trade back into the draft.
Stevens was likely already looking towards Carolina as his NFL home before the Saints traded back into the draft to select the young dual-threat QB.
“Letting Stevens go to a NFC South division rival wasn’t going to sit well with Payton, although the quarterback’s motivations made sense — he’d worked with Panthers offensive coordinator Joe Brady, then a graduate assistant, at Penn State, where Stevens had started his collegiate career,” columnist USA Today’s Chris Bumbaca wrote.