The long journey for Tennessee quarterback Hendon Hooker, who was one of the NCAA’s best quarterbacks last season before suffering a torn ACL, is over. The Detroit Lions selected Hooker with the 68th pick in the third round, and now, Hooker gets to get back to full strength and acclimate himself to Ben Johnson’s offense while Jared Goff calls the shots in the short term.
There’s a bit of projection for Hooker, who worked in Josh Heupel’s souped-up spread offense, but the tape shows that Hooker does have starting quarterback attributes at the NFL level. It just might take a little time.
Here’s my full scouting report.
Height: 6′ 3⅛” (63rd percentile) Weight: 217 (34th)
40-Yard Dash: N/A
10-Yard Split: N/A
Bench Press: N/A
Vertical Jump: N/A
Broad Jump: N/A
3-Cone Drill: N/A
20-Yard Shuttle: N/A
Wingspan: N/A
Arm Length: 33″ (81st)
Hand Size: 10½” (95th)
Bio: A four-star recruit out of Dudley High School in Greensboro, North Carolina, Hooker chose Virginia Tech over Notre Dame, among other schools. After three seasons on the field with the Hokies, Hooker graduated in December 2020 with a degree in public relations, and went looking for a new home in the transfer portal. He chose Tennessee over Ohio State and Colorado, among other schools. In his collegiate career, Hooker completed 633 of 951 passes for 8,982 80 touchdowns, 12 interceptions, and a passer rating of 119.7. He also gained 2,079 yards and scored 25 touchdowns on 517 rushing attempts.
Hooker was off to a torrid start in 2022, completing 229 of 331 passes for 3,135 yards, 27 touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 123.9 before suffering a torn ACL against South Carolina.
Stat to Know: The NFL classifies explosive passing plays as those plays gaining 16 yards or more, and when throwing passes of 16 or more air yards dead over the middle in 2022, Hooker completed seven of 14 passes for 171 yards, 134 air yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 134.2.
How did C.J. Stroud and Bryce Young, the consensus top two quarterbacks in this class, fare on such passes in 2022?
Stroud: 12 completions in 23 attempts for 391 yards, 270 air yards, six touchdowns, three interceptions, and a passer rating of 97.6.
Young: Two completions in 11 attempts for 63 yards, 58 air yards, no touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 50.9.
Now, it’s time to look at the nature of those throws in Hooker’s case.
Strengths: When you’re evaluating Hooker as an NFL prospect, you absolutely have to take his college offense into account. The Vols were stretching defenses horizontally and vertically to an extreme degree, and that gave Hooker a lot of easy, defined openings. So then, you have to separate the transferable traits from an offense that isn’t 100% transferable.
When it comes to not only making tight-window throws over the middle, but also reading his receivers, I like this 14-yard completion to Ramel Keyton against South Carolina in Hooker’s final college game. He started by looking the deep safety off to the other side of the field, read the outside front-side receiver as an unfavorable look, and hit Keyton in stride where the receiver could get the ball, and the defender couldn’t.
And on this 43-yard pass to Keyton against Florida in Week 4, Hooker had to wait for his receiver to get any separation from cornerback Jason Marshall Jr., who was making that pretty tough. The solution was to get the ball past Marshall at the right time, which Hooker did.
On this 78-yard completion to Jalin Hyatt against Alabama in Week 7, was Hooker assisted by Hyatt’s preposterous downfield speed? Sure. Did he also make a stick throw to his target between two converging defenders with timing and placement? It kinda looks like he did.
This 28-yard touchdown pass to Cedric Tillman against Pitt in Week 2 wasn’t over the middle, but I think it presented another example of Hooker reading the situation well and capitalizing when the opportunity arose. Pitt clogged the middle of the field here, so Hooker’s best option was to wait for Tillman to get open against fairly good lockdown coverage to the boundary. This he did, while stepping up in the pocket to give himself the needed time for everything to play out.
I think there are enough examples of Hooker making the kinds of NFL throws required to strike a balance between what he did in college, and what he’ll be expected to do at the next level.
Weaknesses: Hooker’s passing efficiency is bumped up to a point not only by the nature of his offense, but by the fact that he took a lot of sacks (28 in 2022) when he wasn’t clear about what he was seeing. You have to manage the high completion rate and low mistake rate with that in mind. Here, South Carolina was showing a Cover-0 look which they spun to 2-deep post-snap, and Hooker froze a bit. He’s going to see stuff like this all the time in the NFL, so that’s a thing.
Overall. Hooker was good against two-deep coverages last season (69 of 100 for 947 yards, 742 air yards, eight touchdowns, and two interceptions), but he does need to work on adaptive strategies for when his receivers are pressed, and he has to re-set quickly. Georgia took his spread offense and spit it right back at him more often than not. Hooker completed 23 of 33 passes against the Bulldogs for 195 yards, no touchdowns, one interception, eight sacks (!!!), and a passer rating of 72.2 — by far the worst performance of his season. Hooker’s NFL coaches will need to work with him on getting the ball out in time to avoid disasters like this.
Conclusion: There are a few reasons for NFL shot-callers to debit Hooker in his NFL transition, starting with his age and injury status. And the advantages presented by Josh Heupel’s Air Raid/veer offense are undeniable, as is the fact that some elements of that offense are not transferable to the next level. On the other hand, Hooker is more than a quarterback propped up by a spread offense, there’s nothing he can do about his age, and reports indicate that he’s well on his way to a full recovery. There’s also the truth that a lot of NFL offenses have concepts not unfamiliar to what Hooker has run so efficiently, and however he got there, Hooker has become an NFL-ready quarterback in just as many ways as his detractors will say he is not.
NFL Comparison: Geno Smith. It took Smith a long time to succeed at the NFL level for multiple reasons, but when he finally caught on all the way with the Seahawks, he combined athleticism, accuracy, velocity to the second and third levels, and leadership attributes to make himself into a franchise quarterback. Smith also had to adjust to the NFL from his college offense, and while that’s also the case for Hooker to a point, Hooker has already shown enough to make his NFL graduation relatively seamless.
