(Photo: Michael Bacigalupi)
NEW ORLEANS – Cam Jordan. Demario Davis. Alvin Kamara. Taysom Hill.
That’s New Orleans Saints royalty.
They all have pre-approved membership in the Saints Hall of Fame – whenever they stop playing.
It seems likely that most if not all of them will be playing in 2026 and perhaps beyond. But it also seems likely that one or more of them have played in the Caesars Superdome in a New Orleans uniform for the last time.
The Saints (5-10) finished the home portion of their 2025 schedule with an encouraging 29-6 victory against the New York Jets on Sunday afternoon.
The dual threats of advancing age and business considerations – Jordan, Davis and Hill are playing on expiring contracts and Kamara’s expires after next season – suggest one or more of them won’t be playing in New Orleans in 2026 as the Saints enter the second year of a youth movement.
The NFL is an unpredictable business so all four of them could be wearing black and gold beyond the games in Nashville and Atlanta that will mark the end of this season.
But let’s not miss an opportunity to recognize them in case Sunday’s game was indeed the swan song for one or more of them.
The only disappointing part of a performance that ended with a third consecutive victory and the fourth in rookie quarterback Tyler Shough’s seven starts was that Kamara was unable to suit up because of a knee injury that kept him out of a fourth consecutive game.
At least Kamara was recognized three nights earlier when he was shown on the video screen from his courtside seat at the Pelicans game against the Rockets in the Smoothie King Center.
More on him later.
Next is Jordan, the longest-tenured Saint, who has played all 15 of his NFL seasons in New Orleans and might be the most likely of the four to be wearing black-and-gold in 2026.
Jordan has spoken often and with reverence about the fact that his father, former tight end Steve Jordan, who was part of a large cheering section assembled from a variety of national and international locations that was on hand for Cam’s game Sunday, played his entire NFL career with the same franchise.
The elder Jordan was chosen for six Pro Bowls during his 13-year career with the Minnesota Vikings.
His son has long made it clear that he wants to play his entire career in New Orleans. Even though he’ll turn 37 shortly before next season’s training camp he has shown his value throughout this rebuilding season for the Saints, and he put an exclamation point on it in Week 16.
He had two of the Saints’ eight sacks against poor Brady Cook on back-to-back plays Sunday, passing linebacker Rickey Jackson, the standard against which all New Orleans defenders are judged, to claim sole possession of 17th place in NFL history with 130 and brought to 29 (of a possible 31) the number opponents against whom Jordan has a sack. It also made the Jets’ undrafted rookie the 51st passer that Jordan has sacked.
Jordan wasn’t the only Saints defender making history Sunday. Davis, the best Saints linebacker this side of Jackson and New Orleans’ elder statesman by six months over Jordan, surpassed 1,600 career tackles. He needs six more in the last two games to surpass the single-season best of 136 that he set last season.
Now for Hill, the one in the foursome that has least resembled himself this season, but who turned back the clock Sunday. In fact he had one of the most Taysom-esque games of his career.
(Photo: Michael Bacigalupi)
The tight end/running back/quarterback/special teamer, who missed the first four games of the season while rehabbing from major knee surgery last December, ran, caught, passed and ran some more against New York’s beleaguered defense.
With Kamara out – and primary backups Kendre Miller and Devin Neal on injured reserve – Hill breathed just enough life into the running game to complement Shough’s season-best passing game.
Hill, who had just 37 rushes for 72 yards coming in, led the way with 12 rushes for 42 yards, giving him the same number of yards and one fewer carry than the rest of New Orleans’ ball carriers combined.
Two of the yards came as an up-back in punt formation on a fourth-and-1 from the Saints’ 33, jump-starting a drive that ended with Charlie Smyth’s 36-yard field goal that gave the home team the lead for good, 9-6 late in the second quarter.
Then on the first play after the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter Hill went all Tyler Shough and threw a 38-yard touchdown pass to Chris Olave. That was the only pass of the day for Hill, who was 1-for-5 for 19 yards coming into the game.
But it was Hill’s pass receiving that produced the biggest milestone. He caught four passes for 36 yards (after having just four for 23 yards coming in), giving him 1,002 receiving yards for his career.
Adding that benchmark to his 2,388 passing yards and 2,545 rushing yards Hill became the first player in the Super Bowl era to have 1,000 yards passing, rushing and receiving in his career.
Whether he’ll run, pass or catch as a Saint next season is uncertain, but if Sunday’s performance was his last as a New Orleans player in New Orleans, it was a heck of an encore.
Unfortunately, Kamara wasn’t able to take any curtain calls. In addition to being the Saints’ all-time leading rusher, he also is the standard for touchdowns, yards from scrimmage and all-purpose yardage.
Whether Kamara, who will turn 31 just as NFL training camps are getting under way next summer and already is well past the normal tenure for running backs, continues his career in New Orleans or elsewhere remains to be seen.
Jordan, Davis, Kamara and Hill didn’t get to New Orleans until after the Saints’ only Super Bowl season. Jordan arrived in 2015 in the middle of a three-year stretch of 7-9 seasons that marked the nadir of former coach Sean Payton’s historic tenure.
It was Payton who watched Kamara work out as a draft prospect at the University of Tennessee and saw something special, something that wasn’t so clear to the rest of the NFL and stole him in the third round of the 2017 draft.
Just days before Kamara’s rookie season was to begin the Saints put in a waiver claim for a largely unknown and undrafted quarterback in Hill because Payton saw a skill set that cried out for the creation of a new role to fit a distinctive player.
The Saints won the NFC South in Kamara and Hill’s first season, and after that season, Davis came over as a free agent from the Jets and joined Jordan on the defense.
And New Orleans won the second of four consecutive division titles, reaching the cusp of another Super Bowl in the 2018 season.
It’s unlikely any of these four players will ever play in a Super Bowl with the Saints. But first-year head coach Kellen Moore is building a program that perhaps will wind up in a Super Bowl in the not-too-distant future.
If and when that day comes, the Saints, who have emerged from a 1-8 start to this season to become a respectable team on the rise, might look back and appreciate the impact that Jordan, Davis, Kamara and Hill had in shepherding a rookie head coach and a largely young, rebuilt roster through the difficult early days of a renaissance.