Hendon Hooker is one of the most intriguing quarterback prospects in the 2023 NFL Draft.
He’s built like a classic dropback quarterback but has the speed and athleticism to escape the pocket and create havoc on the ground. He’s an explosive, accurate downfield passer who completed nearly 69 percent of his passes at the University of Tennessee while posting a 58:5 touchdown-to-interception ratio over two seasons. He plays with a game-changing presence.
But he’s also 25 years old — four years older than fellow prospects Bryce Young or CJ Stroud and two months older than Justin Herbert, who just wrapped up his third NFL season. He’s coming off a torn ACL suffered back in November and hasn’t been able to work out for pro scouts. He lit up the sky in a vertical, pass-heavy offense that calls back the gaudy efficiency of 1990s Texas Tech quarterbacks.
This all makes him a polarizing prospect. Both The Draft Network and Pro Football Network peg him as a fourth round pick. ESPN scribe and former NFL front office mainstay Mike Tannenbaum sees him as a top five selection.
Tennessee QB Hendon Hooker rising in mock drafts. Colts GM Chris Ballard has this guy on his radar.https://t.co/KpS8SO057C pic.twitter.com/KAyJSphI3E
— Gregg Doyel (@GreggDoyelStar) March 28, 2023
Tannenbaum’s projection is an outlier, but there’s still been some modest hype building for the Volunteer quarterback as the pre-draft process unfolds. Despite being limited to interviews there’s been a quiet undercurrent pushing him as the top quarterback of that second tier. That doesn’t mean he’ll be a first round pick — though it’s not out of the question — but those runner-up options have generally been a Day 2 staple.
It’s not unheard of to see players with a pre-draft, third-round-or-later grade taken off the board earlier than expected. The Philadelphia Eagles’ gamble paid off when they reached for Jalen Hurts at No. 53. Christian Hackenburg was expected to go somewhere in the third or fourth rounds before the New York Jets continued a tradition of awful quarterback selections to take him in the second round in 2016.
As with any quarterback prospect who doesn’t have unanimous Day 1 hype, there are more ways this could go wrong than right for Hooker. So what are the reasons teams should buy in on his rising stock — and what are the reasons they shouldn’t spend premium draft assets on him?
Why Hendon Hooker can be a franchise NFL quarterback
We’ve touched on his build; at 6-foot-3 and about 220 pounds, he looks like a prototypical NFL quarterback. He won’t have trouble seeing the middle of the field. He has the mass to absorb contact and escape downfield.
He’s fast and sees the field well as a scrambler, having gained more than 2,000 rushing yards in college despite the NCAA’s insistence that sacks count as negative rush yards.
His game tape is littered with moments where he coolly stands in the pocket despite the heat of a pass rush around him, then delivers a gorgeous strike downfield to a flying wideout with a step on his defensive back in single coverage.
His accuracy is absurd, especially given his penchant for deep throws. Hooker completed nearly 70 percent of his attempts as a Volunteer. He got the job done standing still in the pocket with the top taken off the defense. He got it done on the run in the compressed field of the red zone as well.
These are no-doubt NFL traits. This is a player who’ll have a future in the league. But just what is ceiling will be is a cloudy unknown because there are plenty of warts in his game despite those gaudy numbers.
Why Hendon Hooker can't be a franchise NFL quarterback
We’ve already talked about the two biggest concerns — the fact he can legally rent a car (25 years old) and the injury recovery that may mean he’s 26 by the time he takes his first NFL snap. But the system in which he thrived with the Vols is another concern.
Tennessee’s passing offense was predicated on speedster wideouts and incredibly wide spreads that left the middle of the field open. Head coach Josh Heupel wanted to push the pace, tire out defensive backs and exploit single coverage situations by mashing secondaries into paste with vertical routes.
That worked incredibly well in college, even against the fearsome defenses of the SEC. But it’s not something that’s translated to the NFL in the past, where elite cornerbacks can be trusted on an island. Hooker thrived in the space Heupel’s offense created, but the defenses he faces on Sundays will be much more compressed. This will force him to progress through reads as he discards covered options much more frequently, and quickly, than he did in Knoxville.
That’s a valid concern! Up-tempo quarterbacks with big numbers have panned out in the past — hello, Patrick Mahomes — but the miss rate there is enough to concern NFL decision makers. Zach Wilson’s BYU offense, for example, paired a zone run game with an Air Raid-ish, vertical-route-heavy passing attack to free up the kind of deep balls Hooker has excelled at throwing. Suffice to say, that wasn’t an indicator of future success.
Despite his deep ball wizardry, he also had some key misses in big moments.
His throws on the run aren’t perfect, and sometimes he trusts his wideouts a little too much to make a play. While he mostly avoided interceptions as a Vol there were a handful of do-too-much moments that absolutely would not fly as a pro.
How will that hold up against defenses capable of getting to him more often than his line at Tennessee allowed? His awareness in the pocket, despite some eye-opening scrambles, wasn’t always a positive. Georgia, for example, got to him six times in a 13-27 loss. He was sacked at least three times in four games last season, which isn’t an absurd number by any means for a team that threw deep as often as the Volunteers did, but we’re here to pick nits.
Hooker was an exceptional college quarterback. Tannenbaum clearly values that very highly. His ability to connect with speedster wideouts on fly routes is a skillset that can pay dividends in the NFL.
That should make him a second round pick with the potential to be a late first rounder for a quarterback-needy team, depending on the prognosis of his torn ACL. But how that talent will translate to a new offense is a major question — one that makes it pretty unlikely he’ll slide into the top five of next month’s draft.
Still, Hooker is a worth prospect who’ll get his chance on Sundays. Just probably without carrying the undue pressure of a top 10 draft status on his shoulders.
